The Williams Middle School site being chosen due to its central location for the new Longmeadow consolidated middle school is not in the best interest of the town as it will increase traffic in an already congested area and bring safety issues for the children and for those living in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Parents will drive their children to school for many reasons. Some are due to weather conditions, health reasons, or if they’re running late. It is more prominent in middle school and high school to get a ride than to walk. Parents will be concerned that it will not be safe to walk due to the heavy traffic and will want to drive their child.
The additional traffic congestion will be exacerbated when the population doubles to 650 students at Williams Middle School. No matter how long the queue is on the Williams Middle School site, parents will avoid those lines and drop off on the surrounding residential side streets which have limited sidewalks. For the past 30 years, we have experienced parents dropping off and picking up their children from the back entrance to Williams Middle School on Terry and Blokland drives creating hazardous conditions for those children walking to the middle school and to Blueberry Hill School.
We are against having a consolidated middle school being built on the Williams Middle School site and think the Glenbrook site would be a safer location with less traffic. As was described in the Jones Whitsett Architects’ report, Williams Middle School, set on a 16.6-acre site, is “bounded by residential properties”, whereas Glenbrook Middle School, set on 21 acres, “offers a nice wooded buffer from the surrounding residential community”.
We are in favor of updating or building a new middle school but this is the wrong site for this size of a school. For the safety of all children in town, having 650 students attending Williams Middle School will be an extremely dangerous safety issue for those living in the surrounding neighborhoods and for those students walking or biking to Williams Middle School and to Blueberry Hill School.
Shirley and Bob Barnhart
Longmeadow
