When the new Worthington Hooker Middle School opens on Monday, the principal will be greeting students from behind a different gate — a gate that some neighbors had sought to keep closed.
Principal Robert Rifenburg (pictured) greeted middle school students on a chilly morning this week at a gate at the school’s temporary residence, in the parking lot of the St. Stanislaus’ church on State Street.
On Monday, he’ll greet the kids at the new, $36.5 million Worthington Hooker School at 391 Whitney Ave. The school serves 284 kids in grades 3 to 8.
The school is set to open on Monday at 8:35 a.m. with a ceremony replete with a student performance and appearances by Frosty the Snowman and the Gingerbread Man.
When the school opens, the pedestrian gate on Everit Street (pictured), at the back entrance to the school, will be open for students to walk through, he announced.
The gate will open from 7:00 to 8:50 a.m. and from 2:30 to 3:10 p.m. It will be closed at all other times, except during after-school activities, Rifenburg said.
Rifenburg made the announcement in a letter sent home to parents this week. (Click here to read the letter.)
The decision capped a vigorous neighborhood debate over whether the gate should be open.
Safe streets activists called for an open gate to encourage students to walk to school. Some Everit Street neighbors sought to keep it closed to minimize vehicular traffic. They claimed the city promised to keep the gate closed because the rear entrance is not meant to be a student drop-off point. (Click here for a story and here for an extensive debate on the topic.)
The issue appears to have reopened wounds over a sensitive issue: The placement of the school and its relation to Everit, the residential street behind it. A group of Everit Street neighbors took the city to court over placement of the school; a years-long acrimonious fight ended with the state Supreme Court ruling in the city’s favor in August 2007.
In his letter Tuesday, Rifenburg made clear that the school’s driveway on Whitney Avenue is the only appropriate place for parents to drop off of pick up their kids by car.
“We are asking all parents not to use Everit Street as a student drop-off or pick up,” he said.
About 35 cars currently swing by the Hooker School at St. Stan’s to drop off kids every morning, Rifenburg said. He expects fewer at the new site, because more kids are likely to walk.
East Rock Alderman-Elect Justin Elicker said he met with several groups of people concerned about the gate and helped the school system come to its decision.
He said he believes the gate should be open for kids to walk to school “because as a safe streets activist, it would be disingenuous to advocate for an access point to be locked.”
In a letter to Everit Street neighbors, he assured them that “a security guard will be posted at the gate during entry/exit times to ask any drivers that may attempt to drop their children off at the gate to drive to the Whitney Avenue entrance.”
Chief Operating Officer Will Clark stressed that while a procedure is in place, there is no “agreement” set in stone about staffing at the gate or about the gate times. The school will keep the gate open during after-school activities, which may vary from day to day. The school may also adjust staffing depending on how the traffic on Everit goes.
Everit Street neighbor Mark Wuest criticized the city’s handling of the issue. He said he has no problem with kids walking to school, but fears an influx of traffic on his residential street.
“We have been given no assurances that the issue of vehicular traffic has or will be addressed in any meaningful way,” Wuest wrote in an email message.
East Rock Alderman Roland Lemar, who lives across Eld Street from the gate where students get dropped off at the Hooker swing space, said pickup and drop-off has never posed a problem for neighbors there. At most, it brings a spike in traffic for about 10 minutes twice per day, he said. A visit to Eld Street during morning drop-off Wednesday found a peaceful trickle of cars dropping kids off without congestion.
In an email to Everit Street neighbors, Elicker said he knows the gate solution won’t make everyone happy. He said he hopes the approach will “offer a way for us to move forward and set a positive, welcoming tone for the new school in our neighborhood.”
When the new school opens, many Hooker parents are looking forward to walking their kids to school, as the school site moves closer to their homes.
Since Hooker is a neighborhood school, there will be hardly any buses — just a special education bus and two smaller buses.
About 60 percent of Hooker students live in East Rock. The Hooker School district is pretty small, and most kids live quite close to the school, Clark pointed out.
Clark said the school district is putting together recommended routes for “walking buses” — groups of parents and kids who would walk to school every day, picking up other kids along the way.
He said he expects some form of walking bus to be up and running in the spring.
Students and staff are looking forward to major improvements at their new school. It has a separate cafeteria, auditorium and gymnasium, as well as a science lab. That will mean more space for the students, who have been cramped into swing spaces for years.