These swings have been off limits to kids for safety reasons.
Markeshia Ricks Photos
Nathman: Kids need to play
An old school could soon have a new parking lot and playground. And that’s good news to an award-winning principal who has struggled to find her students a place to get their needed 20 minutes of daily exercise.
The City Plan Commission has approved a site plan to reconstruct the parking lot behind the Quinnipiac Real World Magnet Math STEM School in Fair Haven Heights to add six additional parking spaces, pave the existing gravel parking lot, and create a new play area for students, while also replacing a failed drainage system.
The plan for the site was a collaboration between the Board of Education and City Plan staffer Anne Hartjen, who is a landscape architect. She told commissioners at their most recent meeting that the Board of Ed had purchased two houses at the back of the school property to make way for more parking.
“It’s a very constrained site in a residential neighborhood, overlooking the Quinnipiac River,” she said. “There is an ongoing parking problem.” And because the school is so old there also is an ongoing playground problem.
“It is one of the last few schools left that have not been renovated as part of the school construction program,” she added. “This is a small project to try to address some of the immediate needs of the school in hopes that the school will become a part of the school construction program in the next three to five years.”
Until that new school comes along, Hartjen said, the plan is to reconstruct the parking lot at the back of the school to create 42 parking spaces including one traditional handicap accessible spot and one handicap van accessible spot. An existing gravel lot will be paved to create 24 of those spaces.
Hartjen said her design makes use of some space in the existing parking lot for the play area, but that will be contingent on how much it costs to get in the new drainage system and reconfigured parking lot. There is currently $300,000 set aside for the project.
“Whatever money we have left, we will use to build the playground,” she told commissioners.
Quinnipiac Principal Grace Nathman said getting a new play area is good news because the state mandates that children have 20 minutes of recess every day. Meeting that goal has been a challenge for the school, which five years ago was meant to be just a swing space for other schools like Jepson School and Hill Central School.
“The surrounding area really has been deemed unsafe,” she said. “We took the swings down because kids were falling on hard surfaces outside.”
Hartjen outlines the plan.
The students currently make use of the nearby, city-owned Fairmont Park, which is adjacent to the school grounds, and has two baseball fields. But that space has to be shared with the school’s gym classes. When the weather is bad, the students have to play inside, Nathman said.
“We’re thrilled after five years to finally get a playground and parking lot,” she said. “When the weather is nice we try hard to get them outside. They need to get outside and run.”
This area will feature more parking space.
She credited Board of Ed Chief Operating Officer Will Clark and her parent action team with getting the ball rolling on the parking lot and playground, construction of which is expected to last from April to June. Nathman said in addition to a playground, students will have a garden in the front of the school where they will work on not only growing things, but also mindfulness practices.
And this area will become part of the play space.
Nathman credits her teachers for helping Quinnipiac students become number two in the district behind Hooker on the state Accountability Indices, including a decrease in chronic absenteeism from 29.4 percent to 10 percent, and an increase in Smart Balance Assessment scores in math and reading. Those improvements helped Nathman be named regional principal of the year by the Magnet Schools of America.
And it all happened in a building that has no air conditioning.
“In spite of the the fact that its the most rundown building in New Haven, because we’re the only one, I think, without air conditionining,” Nathman said. “I still got principal in the year, we’re still No. 2 in the district for the state accountability assessment and one our teachers won teacher of the year for New Haven last year.
“So it’s not the brick and mortar,” she added. “It’s truly the teachers in front of the room that make the difference.”