Brad Cilley lives in Concord.
The Concord School Board has recently entered into an option to purchase the 38-acre parcel of land along Clinton Street owned by CenterPoint Church with an eye toward siting a new middle school there. While the School Board has offered a few reasons they believe this site to be worth considering, there are compelling reasons why it would be a poor decision.
For any middle school student in this city, the CenterPoint Church property would be an isolated site. Information presented at the webinar hosted by the School Board on May 5th stated that just under 100 Rundlett Middle School students currently walk to school, along with the information shared about the light ridership of the school busses since COVID, it’s easy to conclude that those with family means are being driven to school and the rest bused or left to walk.
It’s also easy to posit that those walking either live close by or are doing so out of necessity. Building a middle school on the CenterPoint land will clearly not serve any student well from an access perspective. Like it or not COVID is still with us and willingness to ride the bus to school appears to still be tenable for many, leaving walking or car drop-off as the options. Those who are currently walking will likely find the CenterPoint site a burden of some magnitude and those parents driving children to school will face an even more exacerbated traffic density problem along Clinton Street.
We like to talk about the benefits of a close and safe community environment. The isolation of the CenterPoint site along a busy traffic conduit into the city and with a large stretch with no neighborhood seems to be the antithesis of the idea of community. Siting the middle school on this property would eliminate an environment that enhances a secure place for children going to and from school. There will be no neighborhood supervision or surveillance which supports child safety and reinforces expectations of good behavior. This is what neighborhoods provide. If you want children and parents to feel connected to their community, why would you site a school completely outside of any community neighborhood?
There is no one that can give an absolute assurance that the terror of children being murdered by deranged people with guns cannot happen in our community. The safety and wisdom of including a co-sited YMCA at the new middle school seem questionable. Assuming that this will be a health and fitness center open to the public, how, in a time of outsiders invading schools, can this be considered a good move? I would urge our elected School Board and public safety officials to let us know how they can assure us with absolute certainty that the risk of potential harm is not increased by co-locating a public access facility of any kind with a school before entering into any agreements.
I cannot in good conscience leave off without commenting on the environmental impact of building and paving over this 38-acre wildlife habitat. I find it concerning that many citizens, including a current member of the School Board, were very vocal in opposing the extension of Langley Parkway and attendant disruption of green space and yet are silent on this much larger impact site.
I don’t believe there has been any formal wildlife survey conducted on the CenterPoint land which consists mostly of fields and woodland. Through my own observations over the nearly 25 years I’ve tended a garden bordering this land, the CenterPoint site is home to deer, wild turkeys, foxes, multiple rodent species, large hawks, and songbirds. It’s separated from the green space of White Farm and Winant Park and the land which would have been disrupted by Langley Parkway extension by essentially two street crossings.
The architectural renderings that have been disclosed by the School Board depict a complete disruption of the entire 38 acres with buildings, paved parking lots and grass fields covering its entirety. Athletic fields may be the color green but are ecological dead zones, nearly as much so as are paved lots and buildings from a life-supporting perspective.
I’m not a professional educator, just a parent that sees the annihilation of existing wildlife habitat for anything not absolutely essential to human life and for which there are no viable alternatives as a bad lesson for our children. I’ve raised two children (both went through Conant, Rundlett and Concord High) and see every day in my now-adult children that the most enduring lessons are learned from behaviors observed in the actions of adults.
What is the point of teaching children about the natural world and the ecological connections that support all life, including humans, if we don’t reinforce by action taken to protect these connections?
Building a new middle school facility on the existing site of Rundlett Middle School seems to eliminate these issues associated with building on the CenterPoint land. That it can be done with minimal interruption of learning has already been demonstrated by the School Board when they chose to tear down Conant School and re-build Abbot-Downing in its place.
Disruption to the neighborhood is often cited by the School Board as a reason not to rebuild at the Rundlett site. I submit that it will likely not be much more disruptive to build on the site than to decommission and tear down the existing Rundlett structure, which will have to happen no matter where the new school is built.
Is a time-limited inconvenience for the neighborhood worth removing a strong community connection for students and destruction of the entire micro-ecosystem that exists currently on the CenterPoint Church site? Is this the lesson we want our children to carry into the future?