Clarksburg Mulling Safe Routes Possibilities
CLARKSBURG, Mass. — The town and state are adapting plans for a walking route for children along West Cross Road from the school to the Community Center.
Clarksburg School earlier this year was awarded a $1.2 million Safe Routes to School grant toward developing a safe way to access the neighboring town field, installing a sidewalk, and putting in a crosswalk from there to the Community Center, which also is the town's evacuation center.
There are few sidewalks in the rural community and West Cross Road is no exception. The students can now reach the town field through a rough path in the woods and walk the field until crossing the road or walk along the sidewalk-free road, a heavily traveled way with no shoulders.
Select Board Chair Robert Norcross told the School Committee last week that the walkway along the road could more likely be an apron as the town doesn't have the capacity to maintain a sidewalk.
But the trail could be changed to a narrow path that would allow for use during the winter. This had been discussed with the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Planning Committee that is incorporating the field, the school, the center and the four corners area in its planning.
Right now there's no way to keep the path clear in the winter for use as an emergency route. Instead, Norcross said the designers are looking at a limited one-way road that could be blocked during non-school hours.
"It'll be a narrow road, but it'll be wide enough for our small plow to get on, to come around back and to go down the town field and then the Safe Routes can take it from there to go to the school," he said. "That is all in preliminary work. But I think it's important that the school knows what we're doing, and it's also important to know that the school comes up with ... to make sure we have meetings coming on and push for this."
Norcross cautioned that this was all preliminary talks with the state and MVP planning but could be a win-win for the school and town.
He also updated the committee on some other projects, saying he is still pushing for the state to release $500,000 from a 2018 bond bill for the school roof and that the board would be discussing use of American Rescue Plan Act funds for a broken heater in the library and possibly air conditioners.
"I just wanted you to know that we're trying to be in tune, keeping this building up," he said, noting that resident Thomas Bona, who has volunteered time and expertise in the past, was looking at repairs on the library exterior.
Superintendent John Franzoni said plans were to meet with the new library board to discuss security between the two buildings. The school and library are connected and the school had been suing a space in the connector for programming.
"We don't really use the shared space as much recently because of that heater issue," he said. "My big key issue is that we want to make sure that we can keep the doors appropriately locked. ... Obviously, those things cost money, so we want to go over that with them."
The school also wants to address moisture issues in the kindergarten room. He said estimates to remove the carpeting and put down new flooring in that room and the first grade was $16,000.
"The carpet is probably about 30 years old, or very, very close to that," said kindergarten teacher Cathy Howe. "Every single year students have, I would call them allergy reactions, pretty much, but they're sneezing and coughing, and, you know, kids have headaches and it's filthy."
Prekindergarten teacher Mary Quinto said she and her husband had installed the flooring in her room and the school and summer program had split the cost for material and preparation. Select Board member Daniel Haskins suggested volunteer labor could also install the flooring in the kindergarten and first grade rooms.
Norcross said he'd also put in more insulation in the prekindergarten to Grade 1 wing, remembering how Howe had given examples of her lunch freezing in the room. There had been plans to tear down and rebuild that "temporary" 1970s wing but the new school project had been voted down in 2017.
"I know those classrooms have issues, and eventually we're gonna have to look at that part of the school, especially
renovation," he said.
In other business, Franzoni said the school is applying for a $260,00 early childhood literacy grant and a $200,000 regionalization study in collaboration with North Adams Public Schools and Hoosac Valley Regional School District.
Principal Sandra Cote said the students had met or been above average in many of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. The eigth grade had scored above the state average in every science category but some students are still working on writing, which she attributed to the pandemic.
The committee also discussed a cutoff date for 3-year-olds in the prekindergarten program and will continue the discussion next month.
"A 3-year-old who turns three in September is very different from a 3-year-old turning 3 in January or February," said Cote. "If we're going to open it up to more students, I guess my recommendation would be only to say you have to turn 3 by the end of the first marking term. And I wouldn't go beyond that."
The prekindergarten only accepts residents, in part because of the increase in the resident student population and because, Franzoni said, there were non-residents last year "that didn't fulfill their full obligation."
The school also did not open school choice because of the rise in residential population but the superintendent said there needed to be a conversation about residency policies as some families have used grandparents or others as addresses.
"We're challenged by the families, and it happened in all of our districts. It happened in Clarksburg, Florida, Savoy, those three towns are all impacted by having districts that families desire to have their children at school," he said.
