George Kelly is a resident of East Concord, and a retired public school educator/ administrator.

Methinks the Concord School Board ought to pile into a van, preferably an unmarked one, and take a drive across the river up “Gully Hill,” past the state office buildings, and on to East Side Drive, Portsmouth Street, Curtisville Road, and visit every cluster of homes dotting the area near the site of the new middle school.

They could take a gander at the plethora of signs ( many more than the ones up for political candidates), that say, “Rebuild at Rundlett.”

Then, perhaps they should hang around and witness the congestion that is already on the Heights in the morning, at noon, and when school lets out. Maybe someone in the group might opine that the mess already experienced daily will be exacerbated further if a new school is built just down the road.

After that, they could view the woods where the new school might be, and wonder at the “clear cut,” that will be necessary to eliminate all the trees on the property. For sure, during that process, there will be environmentally sensitive areas that will need mitigation. After which, more than 23 acres of forest will have been eliminated. By all means, let’s demolish a forest as we teach students how to be stewards of the land.

On the way home, maybe someone will mention that 2/3 of the prospective middle school students actually come from neighborhoods near Rundlett. And someone else might realize that when a school is removed from a neighborhood, everyone suffers (the new site won’t be “owned” by anyone) it will just be “out there,” all by itself.

I’m interested in the “fuzzy” thinking that has gone into the board’s decision, gleaned from Board President Pamela Walsh’s recent My Turn. If this reflects what prompted the vote to build the new school behind Broken Ground School, there is more than that decision that may be suspect.

I am unable to understand the assertion that building the middle school at Rundlett will somehow be an inferior learning environment to the East Side location. The interior of a school is where most learning happens. If teachers want to take kids outside to experience the environment, they can requisition a bus to any of the beautiful trail systems maintained by the city.

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Rebuilding on the Rundlett site will take longer, but that’s no reason to move the site to the East Side. I assume that the school being built, in either case, is for the long term. I don’t think that students will suffer appreciably. Again, learning is learning. No matter how sophisticated and innovative any new school is, it is still dependent on good teachers, innovative curriculum, and high standards.

While I agree that construction at the Rundlett site could cause some disruption, I don’t believe that students are going to be deprived of substantial learning. Teachers might request opportunities from the construction company for some real experiential learning — math and science “field trips” come to mind.

That taxpayers might have to bear the costs of additional site plan studies is no reason to not consider the Rundlett site. After all, the school board has already spent taxpayer money on the Clinton Street location, without first securing a purchase and sale agreement from the church-owned land. The Clinton Street location was a bad choice to begin with. Wasn’t the rationale for building our elementary schools in part, to preserve the neighborhood experience for kids and parents. When a school is placed “out of town,” no one “owns” it. It’s just a building somewhere “out there.”

Recently, the Monitor published an article refuting the claim that state funding would be lost and/or postponed if a new site plan was drawn up for the Rundlett site. In fact, the funding sought is still based on the proposed construction on Clinton Street.

School boards usually get what they want, and sometimes what they deserve. Presently, there is a petition circulating that if successful, will put a proposition to voters, saying that they, and not the board, will vote on the location of any new school. This of course will erode the board’s autonomy, which heretofore I’ve always found to be a good thing.

The board’s high-handed, some might even say arrogance, in the face of a willful opposition may ruin their charter. Their unwillingness to listen and recognize that many of us both on the East Side and the West Side are adamantly opposed to the site of a new school being built behind Broken Ground aren’t going to disappear (Rebuild at Rundlett) or at least give the ever-burgeoning opposition a chance to be heard on the issue. Otherwise, you may indeed get “what you deserve,” and that would be unfortunate.