The Joint School Committee and City Council Committee worked this week on ensuring that a crossing guard and flashing school sign would be placed in front of the Metcalf School on Northampton Street. The school is home to the Opportunity Academy, which, according to the Holyoke Schools Department, “offers a set of alternative high school pathways that allow students to continue or restart on a pathway to a diploma if they are not succeeding in a more traditional high school setting.”

“Maybe they can push this a little further up because this is important. These are things that we need to get done. And, the more people we push for this, the better off we’re going to be.” City Councilor Howard Greaney Jr.

The matter has been in discussion since last November, said the chairman of the committee, City Councilor Kevein Jourdain. He asked HPS Schools Superintendent Anthony Soto whether the will be a crossing guard and/or flashing light with a school sign and a crosswalk by the time school begins on August. 25.

Currently, school staff serve as crossing guards, said Soto.

“We work with the police department … they have traffic information, and then we have information about how many students we actually have walking. Metcalf typically doesn’t didn’t have a lot of walkers in the past. A lot of the kids who were attending Metcalf, take the bus. So with the number of students that we actually have walking as opposed to getting dropped off and on buses, at the time, they analyze where the crossing guard post should be. That wasn’t an area where they thought they should be. … Since the pandemic, it’s been a very challenging time to find people that are willing to work,  2.5 hours a day, one hour in the morning and one hour at dismissal.

“We try to make sure that in front of the buildings, we have staff readily available. I know that, Councilor (Kocayne) Givner is actually on some sort of subcommittee around safe driving and pedestrian (safety), and I’m hopeful that  whatever work that committee is doing, they have some really good recommendations on what they’d like to see in front of schools and how we can work collaboratively.”

Asked by Jourdain how many kids are in the Opportunity program, Soto said that there are “a couple of hundred kids, but on any given day you’re looking at 30, 40, sometimes 60, depending on the day.”

The matter was tabled, pending receiving actionable information.

In other school news:

• The newly built Peck Middle School will soon have a big school sign facing Northampton Street.
• The HPS is looking into reducing the multimillion-dollar costs to transport students. Holyoke pays $12,000 per student to drive them to the schools. Said Jourdain: “It just goes to show the cost of education when we’re not even educating anybody yet, just to even get them to the building is 12 grand a kid per school year.”
• State appropriations to HPS are going down; Soto will be working with his team and the School Committee to address the consequences of the state’s deficit

The documents and agenda for this meeting can be read here.

UPCOMING MEETINGS