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January 12, 2013

Letter: A solution for Gloucester 'neighborhood schools'

Gloucester Daily Times

To the editor:

Regarding the My View column by Superintendent Safier (the Times, Wednesday, Jan. 9), Fuller School was a neighborhood school for downtown kids, who are now bused as far as Lanesville.

Of course neighborhood schools are what we all wish for, but we do not have them. Every school building is in some student’s neighborhood. However, if many of the students at a school are bused from neighborhoods far away, it is not a neighborhood school any more.

The solution to having close contact between students, teachers, and parents in a small school atmosphere despite using a large building has already been implemented. You split the school up into houses as has been done at O’Maley. You get the small school atmosphere and intimacy, plus the expanded offerings and facilities and support staff of the larger school. If you wish, you could sort the houses out by residential neighborhoods.

I have the greatest respect for Superintendent Safier but have a feeling that he is going out on a limb to support the party line.

The plan to dispose of a fine Fuller School building and build a new school that is too small for our needs and to continue busing all the children from downtown out to the suburbs is not objectively supportable.

DAMON E. CUMMINGS

Washington Street, Gloucester

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