Letters: Conte Project a Critical Opportunity
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To the Editor:
My name is Dawn Nelson, and I am writing to ask for the support of the community of North Adams around the Conte School renovation project.
I am a middle school teacher in the public school system in Weston, where I have been an art teacher for the past 26 years. About six years ago, I purchased a unit in The Eclipse Mill. I have spent nearly every weekend, school vacation, and summer vacation in North Adams since I got my studio at the Eclipse Mill, and my intention is to move here full time when I retire from teaching in about a year and a half. This request for support of the Conte project comes from what I have observed during my many years of experience as a public school teacher in Massachusetts, and also as a person with a strong personal interest in the long-term well-being of the community of North Adams.
The most important thing here is that 80 percent reimbursement opportunities for projects in schools are very rare, and once they are gone, they are gone. We now have one of these opportunities. To me, it seems critically important that we not pass up this opportunity, and I would urge every citizen of North Adams to take the time to really understand the meaning and time frame of this chance to make a significant step forward in the modernization of the educational facilities in this city, and to make sure that we don't, as a community, pass up a rare chance and a wonderful opportunity.
Secondly, I would like to speak to the choice of the Conte School as a site for this project. The Conte has been a key educational site in North Adams since the late 1800s. It was a glorious school building in its day, and many aspects of the architectural optimism of the building are still intact there today. It clearly needs updating to bring it up to date in terms of contemporary educational requirements, but every school in North Adams would need this kind of updating. With this 80 percent reimbursement option from the state, that financial burden will be eased exponentially. The school building also has the advantages of a central location in town, easy (walking distance) access to the rich resources of Mass MoCA, MCLA, the library, Heritage Park, a variety of artist sites, the City Hall and Police Department, and it is located such that it may also be able to take advantage of the renovation of the Mohawk Theater in the future.
I have heard from people opposed to the project that they are concerned about young children being so close to the downtown area, expressing safety concerns about children wandering downtown. As a teacher, I have experienced that elementary school students seldom leave a school building unattended, and they certainly do not wander around the neighborhood surrounding a school by themselves. Actually, these days, safety concerns about leaving small children unattended has resulted in a culture where very few children walk to school. This is really a change in society. Most children today ride in buses or cars to go to school, for safety and other reasons. From my point of view, it is the security of the school building itself that is most important in terms of student safety, and I would hope that this would be part of what is addressed in the building renovations and modernization.
Another concern that I have heard is that there is no place for children to play. I hope that that good attention is being given to planning both indoor and outdoor recreational spaces. As a teacher, I am very aware that indoor spaces are less weather dependent, and therefore very important.
Changes in technology, over the time of my own teaching career, have changed what a school needs to look like and to be able to do. I think that changes around technology are the most important changes that need to happen in our schools today, and am so glad we will have the chance to make some of these changes.
I know that schools are near or at the top of the list of what people consider important in a town. I am so glad that we have this chance to make a huge step forward in improving our school facilities ant a fraction of what the cost would ordinarily be to us, and I hope that as a community, we will stand firmly in support of this project!
Dawn Nelson
North Adams
March 19, 2013
Tags: Conte School, school building, school project,
