If you live in the Parkway neighborhoods of Boston, you’ve probably seen lawn signs over the past few months: “STOP 361 BELGRADE.” More recently, you may have seen some signs saying “We support Roxbury Prep.” What’s all this about? Well, at 361 Belgrade Ave., at the intersection of Belgrade and the West Roxbury Parkway, close to the Bellevue station on the commuter rail’s Needham Line and to the West Roxbury police station and Holy Name, there’s a used car dealership that has seen better days. Roxbury Prep, an existing charter school that now has high school campuses in Hyde Park and Roxbury, has proposed building a new high school building on the site. There has been fierce opposition from a new neighborhood group called the Greater Belgrade Ave. Neighborhood Association. Things are likely to come to a head at a BDPA meeting this week; the public comment period on the project also will close in a couple of weeks. I live very close to the proposed site.
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I support the project. Here’s why.
- Zoning Concerns. The GBANA is asking residents to tell their representatives that the new building is not consistent with its location in the Greenbelt Overlay District and is not “in conformity with the existing neighborhood’s landscape.” I’m not a zoning lawyer or a zoning expert, but what I know is that right now the site is a run-down auto dealership in a commercial district. There has been a good amount of new development and redevelopment in the stretch of Belgrade Ave. from the Parkway heading towards Roslindale Square. The school’s initial plan was for a three or four story building, but the plans have since been modified to call for a two or three story school. And there’s another school right up the street at Holy Name. So I just don’t see how the new building will be inconsistent with the character of the neighborhood; it will be an improvement.
- Traffic and congestion. The school will be at a busy intersection. So yes, traffic is a concern. The school has modified its plan in light of community feedback to reduce the number of students and staff from more than 900 to just more than 600, and the school says that 90% of its students take public transportation to and from school. The commute for them will be a “reverse commute.” Perhaps rather than opposing the proposal, residents could seek additional trains on the Needham Line, or additional resident-sticker parking zones. But overall, I don’t see that traffic or transit will be problems.
- Charter Schools. I don’t really like charter schools as a general matter, and frankly Roxbury Prep seems somewhat mediocre, or at least not outstanding. But it already exists, and the question is just where it should have its building. So I don’t see my basic opposition to charter schools as a reason to oppose the project.
- Race. The elephant in the room is of course race. I take the GBANA’s assurance that its opposition has no racial element at face value. But there’s no getting around the fact that Roxbury Prep is 96.7% Black or Hispanic, with 72.6% of the students having “high needs” and 57.3% “economically disadvantaged.” And the opposition to the school is coming from West Roxbury and the “goes shopping on Centre Street, not Roslindale Square” part of Roslindale. So even granting that there are legitimate concerns about zoning, traffic, and so forth, can we not work with our fellow Bostonians to make this happen?
I’ll be sending a note on this to my representatives, and I hope you will too!
For public schools I’ve always been fine with whatever the racial make up turns out to be given the demographics of the neighborhood it serves, but I thought charter school admission was by application and therefore am a bit surprised the numbers are so lopsided.
The transportation and traffic concerns seem legitimate.
Service on the Needham line is abysmal, with just three outbound trains between 7a and 10a each day. There is simply no way that hundreds of students could squeeze onto those trains. There is NO capacity at South Station for additional trains on that line, and NO ability for the MBTA to add trains or equipment. The proposals I found provide parking for just 66 cars at the proposed facility, not nearly enough to handle even the faculty and administration, never mind students with cars.
When you conclude that “I don’t see that traffic or transit will be problems”, it sounds to me like a case of “I’ve already made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts”.
I agree with you that race is the real issue here, along with opposition to charter schools.
I think we should be therefore be talking about different questions:
1. What does it take to create neighborhood schools in Roxbury that Roxbury families want to attend?
2. Is this the best location to site a new facility for Roxbury Prep if a new facility is to be built?
I am dismayed that forty five years after the Boston school busing crisis, West Roxbury still exemplifies racism in Boston.
I expect many students will take the bus (as I often do!) The area is served by the 35, 36, 37, and 38. Also, I don’t ride the outbound Needham line in the morning, but I find it hard to believe it is nearly as busy as the inbound line in the morning.
I think the school forbids students to drive to school as a general rule, and the plan seems to call for 67 staff people.
Perhaps you know of a more suitable site, but apparently the school, after an extensive search, did not.
More generally, your comment is at cross purposes with itself. If the transit issues are as severe as you think, then racism is perhaps not the motivator for opposition?
We’re talking about 600 students. A single bus carries at most 60-70 people. The area is already subject to heavy traffic. Is it realistic to think that ten more buses will be added in the half-hour before school starts?
It doesn’t sound like you looked at the timetable for the Needham line. Three trains stop at West Roxbury:
7:09a
8:09a (express from Back Bay)
9:29a
Do you think that the single 7:09a train will hold several hundred new passengers? Do you think that the school will delay opening on the many days that the train is delayed?
A similar situation holds for the return trip in the afternoon:
3:06p
4:09p (express to Back Bay)
5:18p
How will students with extracurricular activities get home?
The Needham line isn’t a viable option, unless it has FAR more frequent service.
I think racism is the reason the entire issue exists. The institution (Roxbury Prep) exists because Boston public schools are more segregated and more troubled than they were 45 years ago during the busing crisis. Racism in West Roxbury was rampant then and is rampant now.
If ALL of us — statewide — insisted that EVERY school-age resident of Massachusetts be provided with comparable schools, staff, and facilities, then we wouldn’t have this issue. This issue is playing out in West Roxbury. I’m under the impression that public school systems of Springfield, Lowell, Lawrence, and other gateway cities are as bad or worse.
You’ve correctly observed that the school is already operating, so the question at hand is the location of the building. Transit access is surely a legitimate concern about any such siting.
I think that building a school in a location where students literally can’t get there is bad idea. I agree that that may play to a racist agenda of West Roxbury opponents, but it’s still true.
Roxbury Prep should have a new building. That building MUST be accessible by public transportation. It looks to me as though the current proposal fails to meet that criteria.
BTW, Somerville High School is served by at least three bus routes (75, 88, 90).
The 88 bus stops at the High School at the following times on a weekday morning:
Outbound:
6:34a
6:47a
7:06a
7:22a
7:38a
Inbound:
6:22a
6:45a
7:04a
7:20a
7:38a
The GLX expansion will add a green line stop adjacent to the school and another in nearby Union Square.
I think that if this plan is going to move forward, then the transit issue must be addressed. Commuter rail is not a viable option — I don’t see how it would ever be affordable to students and I don’t see the MBTA operating 5-10 trains between 6:15 and 7:45 each morning and something similar in the afternoons.
Again: buses. The routes I mentioned have many outbound departures from Forest Hills between 6 and 8. Also, it is 562 students, of which apparently 90% will take transit, which makes about 500. In any event, the school seems to think the transit plan will work, and given that the area residents are generally taking the opposite commute, I don’t see that this is a basis for neighborhood opposition.
We agree that we are talking about 500 new riders arriving in a 90-minute window to a location that already suffers from heavy traffic. That’s about eight new bus trips each morning and afternoon.
Has the MBTA committed to providing this new service? Is the cost of providing this new service included in the proposal?
What is the point of doing a traffic analysis or transportation study if the results are ignored?
I made no claim that this is the basis for the neighborhood opposition. I instead claimed that this is a legitimate objection, regardless of its motivation. The attacks on the Democratic leadership of Virginia are clearly motivated by the pro-choice stance of that leadership, and come from extremist anti-abortion groups. Those attacks are, nevertheless, substantive and should not be dismissed because we disagree with the attacker.
In my view, the fundamental problem driving this issue is the horrific state of the Boston public schools that are available to minority children. It isn’t obvious to me that proceeding with this project addresses that problem in any substantive way.