It is a happy thing, a joyous thing, and a sad thing, an unfair thing. For me to walk five minutes to drop off my oldest at Brayton, the neighborhood school, to deposit him in second grade, and to look forward to his next three years, not to mention my youngest's five full years (1-5) of enrollment. The four crossing guards I know -- Diana and Claudia in one direction and Ariel and Mike in the other.
But walking east along Myrtle, headed toward the intersection with Mountain Avenue, I can't help but think of the walk farther east, past Morris and Overlook, to my old neighborhood, where there is no more local school, and the walk to Jefferson is probably so long and arduous that few children undertake it, and are driven instead. As Summit shrank its primary schools to five from seven, think of the companionship missed, the encounter with the neighborhood not made -- the connection obscured -- while seated behind tempered glass.
It is a class travail, and always has been. Except that once, a school came with the streets -- John, North, Clark, Broad, Chapel -- for almost exactly 70 years. But not for almost 40. Now Roosevelt's a name on a condo, and playing fields that were themselves once coal yards, where I played in a sandbox, are now town houses on Summit's "Park Avenue."
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