Some questions I have after last night's Doherty meeting

The Doherty building project page now has last night's presentation posted. Looking through that, and thinking about all of this some more, I have some questions:

• Are we ever going to get the full list of who is on the building committee? In most places, there is a public appointment and a public list. We're this far along, and many of us are still wondering who was appointed. UPDATE: now posted here, not via the city or the schools

• The building will more than double in size, from 170,000 square feet to 420,000 square feet. Some of this is due to required additions, like those for special ed. However, some of it is due to the addition of four Chapter 74 programs proposed for addition to Doherty: 
• Engineering and Technology (expanding to 400 students)
• Marketing, Management, and Finance (200 students)
• Programming and Web Development (200 students)
• Construction Craft Laborer (150 students)
...which isn't required. Thus, if space is a concern, and not subverting needed programming is key, should these programs be added A) at Doherty and B) at all?


• Likewise, the parking is going from 250 parking spaces to 430, of which 180 are for staff and 250 for visitors and students. Is this really that much of a priority? We need 250 spaces for students and visitors?

• Slide 18, designing on-site replacement, has two "new athletic fields" over by Newton Square, on Parks property, on the current site of the basketball court and tennis courts (at left in the below photo).
  
  
  Is that simply designating that there current is a basketball and tennis courts or is there, in fact, a plan to put fields on Pleasant and Highland on opposite ends of the rotary?


• I'm all for embracing pedestrian access--really! and it is good that it is being included and considered, as below in the white dotted lines coming down the bottom towards the far side of Newton Hill--
  
  
  but slide 21 which includes that ignores some of where that foot traffic goes now (specifically, down the hill and straight across Park to Elm Park). There's even a stairway there! If we don't know where people are actually going, that doesn't seem very hopeful on how well we are tracking what is needed.


• Also, if you look at the above, that puts four driveways--two in and two out--on Highland. We don't have a choice on Highland, as that's where the frontage is, but that's a lot of driveways.


• For those who have ever wondered, regarding Beaver Brook and Foley Stadium a) what was floodplain, b) where that culvert went, slide 22 has an answer:
  
    
   Between the end zone and the twenty yard line, it looks like. It's an 84 inch culvert, they said last night, and the soil is urban fill and ash. Not something to mess with.
  Beaver Brook, of course, is city parkland, and both here and on Newton Hill, it is reassuring to see that the City and all have learned the lesson of Worcester Tech around park takings: don't do it.

• Among the "existing Chandler Magnet Site notes" is "Existing 1950's school" but somehow the actual operation of that school, the presence of 500 students being educated in the building, including the only bilingual program in the district, is entirely left off. Both here and in the site evaluations, I am troubled that this somehow didn't figure in. Leaving aside the impact on students of losing a school--something which very much does matter, as has been extensive researched--the district somehow coping with 500 students being thrust back into the rest of the system is not something that can lightly be dismissed. I heard more than one parent ask if, for example, closing Worcester Arts Magnet would be floated so lightly.
  Whatever the neighborhood schools of those students--and it's hard to miss the "go back where they came from" of such a push--most of Worcester's elementary schools are at or near capacity. I don't know of the current enrollment of the school, but in the past, that school drew heavily from the neighborhood of Chandler Elementary, a school so overenrolled that half of it meets at the Y. The district's not having a long term plan for Chandler Elementary's enrollment is itself dismaying; I have a difficult time imagining a reality in which we all blithly accepted that half a school would go elsewhere for the foreseeable future. That it would be worsened in part so as to avoid having Doherty students have to move for a few years is simply unjust.

• Having been part of the conversation around Worcester State's wish to have the same field at Chandler Magnet for parking, I have to ask: has anyone actually had a discussion with Worcester State about those proposed land takings needed to make this proposal work? As someone who lives in the neighborhood, my own experience with Worcester State is they are hanging on to every square inch they have and are looking to acquire more. 




That's what I have right now. More as I have it.