More Drop-Off Problems at McAuliffe; Broken Ground, Mill Brook

Warren Street neighbors have reportedly been complaining to the school district about children trespassing on private property, according to the latest email to parents from the new school’s principal.

Principal Kristen Gallo informed McAuliffe Elementary School parents that she had been receiving complaints from abutters to the school on Warren Street that parents and children “are cutting through private property, particularly driveways, en route to school and home.” She called the behavior “intrusive and unwelcome” and requested that parents and their children avoid neighbors’ property.

“The safest and most appropriate routes are through use of our sidewalks,” she noted.

This is the latest in a string of problems at the school with abutting property owners and problems during the drop-off or pick-up time periods.

In the email, Gallo also noted that parents were dropping their children off too late in the morning. She requested that children be at the school before 7:45 a.m. so that they could be properly let into school at the appropriate time.

Gallo also requested more parent volunteers to assist with the drop-offs in the morning. She noted that available staff at the school is limited during the 7:30 to 7:45 a.m. time period.

“I would prefer that staff be collaborating with one another before the school day begins,” she said.

Similar problems elsewhere

Other schools are reporting similar problems with transportation issues and the lack of staffing in positions that were previously filled before the elementary school consolidation.

Carolyn Coskren, a mother of a Broken Ground Elementary School student, reported similar issues at that school, to which the recently constructed Mill Brook Primary School is attached. She called traffic and drop-off coordination “a disaster,” with a lack of staffing, while noting that custodians were helping out with the coordination. Coskren said while the Dame and Eastman schools were neighborhood schools that children and parents could walk to, now, most parents have to drive their children or put them on the bus.

“People are driving every which way,” she said. “It’s chaos.”

Traffic problems are not the only issues at the school.

Recently, Broken Ground parents were asked to donate time to help out at the school’s library since the popular part-time library/media tech assistant, Linda Labrie, was laid-off. Labrie was the woman who organized the recent visit at the school of Gov. John Lynch, as part of a reading initiative at the school.

The lay-off came at a time when elementary school parents were being told for years that consolidation would bring about better staffing at the schools due to fewer facilities, with full-time art classes and library staffing for students instead of part-time classes they had before. Now it appears that the opposite is true.

In an email, Broken Ground parents were informed by a PTO member that “the school is asking for volunteers to come into the library during the week and help check out books and restock the books onto the shelves,” a task that was historically done by Labrie.

The school did hire a new full-time technology integrator at two and half times Labrie’s salary but who now reportedly spends most of his time at Mill Brook and doesn’t have time to work in the old library of Broken Ground.

Coskren also expressed concern about the technology divide that appeared to be occurring between the different schools, with elementary school students, essentially in the same building, not getting access to the same equipment. Because there were millions of dollars in technology funds built into the new school buildings, children attending the new schools – McAuliffe, Mill Brook, and Abbot-Downing – are using iPads to learn in their classes while students are Beaver Meadow and Broken Ground are not. 

“There doesn’t seem to be an equal education being delivered,” she said.

Coskren, who also has a student at Rundlett Middle School, said they too are not getting access to the same technology as the younger children or even the high school students who are experimenting with using iPads for algebra classes. She noted that there were also serious “life safety” and other issues at Broken Ground. PTO members, she noted, even spent their own money to buy mulch for the grounds because there wasn’t money in the budget even though the Mill Brook grounds were completely redesigned and constructed right next door to Broken Ground.

“A lot of things seemed to be overlooked during the (consolidation) process,” Coskren noted. “We knew other students were going to get new schools and we were all going to pay for them … but we didn’t think that there would be this separation between students who are in classrooms a few feet from each other.”