My main concern in writing about 1860 Montgomery Avenue is to keep the children who live in Penn Wynne safe and secure.
If you have not yet driven the route from the Penn Wynne area to Villanova and onto Montgomery Avenue to the former Clairemont Farm estate, do that.
But make sure to plan your drive to coincide with peak morning rush hours and mid-to-late-afternoon to experience the heavy volume of traffic either along the narrow County Line Road or the hazardously congested Montgomery Avenue.
Cardinal Rule #1: Keep children safe.
Now imagine yourself to be in fifth grade on a Lower Merion school bus with students who are potentially twice your size on a 2x per day laborious bus ride from one end of the township to the far end to a new grades 5 through 8 middle school.
How can this possibly make sense, or be equitable?
So much has happened since Lower Merion School District officials first expressed their hope and put into motion their plans for a third middle school, located atop an impressive hill in the neighborhood of families living on Stoneridge, Clairemont, and other streets in the Rosemont-Villanova Civic Association jurisdiction.
Top on the list, of course, has been the novel coronavirus, and the resulting pandemic, which by many accounts has now been deemed endemic.
The epic shift in our economy, the changing workplace, the way we work and play, the virtual schoolplace and reinvented teaching-learning, all are major reasons why we, in Lower Merion and Narberth, should rethink 1860 Montgomery Avenue and its original intention as a third middle school.
Add to those sweeping changes due to COVID-19 and the encroaching variants, the increasing residential densification in the entire township and especially in the western end of Lower Merion.
Just recently, the Lower Merion Township Commissioners have approved another multi-family complex, in Bryn Mawr at Lancaster Avenue and Bryn Mawr Avenue, involving the demolition of three office buildings situated across from Ludington Library.
Now is the time to rethink 1860 Montgomery Avenue and decide to open the school as a seventh elementary school with full-day kindergarten.
Cardinal Rule #2: Keep young children close to home.
This is also the right time to reexamine the various flaws in the current plan for 1860 Montgomery Avenue as a middle school and 1835 County Line Road, the former Bennett-DiRocco estate, envisioned, along with the 1800 Montgomery Avenue property, as a deforested outdoor athletics complex.
In order to make the currently planned athletics fields accessible for busses and fan vehicles, the Lower Merion School District hopes to connect the 1835 County Line Road property with the adjacent neighborhood by opening up a cul de sac which has been used for generations as a pocket park by the R-V residents.
There is no credible reassurance which LMSD officials can offer to residents in that neighborhood that their streets will not see increased congestion, pollution, trash, noise, and disruption caused by installing athletics fields on the 1835 County Line Road property through to the rear-contiguous property at 1800 Montgomery Avenue.
Cardinal Rule #3: Respect families and their neighborhoods.
In addition, to install the athletics fields esteemed to be critical to the after-school middle school sports programs, the District is calling for the destruction of nearly five hundred historic trees which make up the generations-old tree canopy shared with Stoneleigh.
Cardinal Rule #4: Preserve the environment, especially the tree canopy.
Obviously, if 1860 Montgomery Avenue becomes a seventh elementary school, there will be no need for the deforestation, no ruination of the Rosemont-Villanova neighborhood, and no inequitable treatment of the children from Penn Wynne.
It would also undo the foolish decision to add the fifth grade children to the middle school enrollments, which among other negatives would deprive them of the natural leadership opportunities for their maturation level available to them as the oldest children in the elementary schools.
A seventh LMSD elementary school would also make it feasible to implement a full-day kindergarten in each elementary school and avoid the ridiculous concept and prospective practice of a district-wide kindergarten center.
This wise and prudent pivot by the Lower Merion School District would provide for the safety and security of the Penn Wynne children and the Rosemont-Villanova residents, and would reinforce the critical importance of walkability and neighborhood schools in Lower Merion.
This solution would also offer innovation in that the 1835 County Line Road property with the former Bennett-DiRocco mansion, situated right next to Stoneleigh, could be repurposed as a student environmental workspace and STEM research center in partnership with Natural Lands.
Cardinal Rule #5: Let’s go for a win-win, LMSD, and rethink 1860 Montgomery Avenue.
Mary “Magistra” Brown, a Professor of Latin at Saint Joseph’s University, taught Latin at Harriton and Lower Merion for 32 years, and with her husband Jim Brown, former President of the Rosemont-Villanova Civic Association, has raised five children, all graduates of Lower Merion District Schools.
"middle" - Google News
October 06, 2021 at 08:20PM
https://ift.tt/3uOltAc
Brown: Time to rethink LMSD’s 1860 Montgomery Avenue Middle School - Main Line
"middle" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MY042F
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment