Election gives hope school board will act on equity audit, make Hutch kids feel welcome at PMS
To the editor:
The recent school board election gives reason to hope for a renewed effort to make all students feel welcome at the middle school and high school.
In recent years, the board of education faced up to the reality of the divisions in Pelham. I could not have been more surprised when the board of education so recently assumed the moral leadership in our community. For all those decades, I assumed that any remedy for the antagonisms in Pelham would come through village and town governments. The board of education: mirabele dictu!
Those of us who grew up in Pelham know what day of the week it is. We knew who were the people who never would be invited to Barclay’s dance classes and which ladies would never be invited to join the Junior League or the Manor Club. It could cut both ways. When Little League first started, I was the only kid from Prospect Hill Elementary School to be put on a team. And parents think the kids don’t notice these things.
A very few years ago, the board of education recognized that it had a problem in the way students entering the middle school reacted to their new environment. The board even commissioned a study to see if the problem was real. The result was the equity audit. Kids from the Hutchinson Elementary School area in particular did not feel welcome in the middle school. The next step was to act on the report’s findings. That never happened. The new board has its opportunity to make a real difference in Pelham.
Michael Treanor
622 Pelhamdale Ave.
Jane Mansfield Bouvier • Jun 2, 2023 at 7:42 pm
I grew up in North Pelham back in the 40’s and 50’s, and wrote for the school newspaper in high school. I remember writing a column in the Pel Mel about “living on the other side of the tracks”. North Pelham was inhabited at that time by first and second generation immigrants..mostly from Ireland and Italy. On the other side of the tracks were the Wall Street financiers , etc. There was definitely a feeling that North Pelham was lesser than. When I went to our 50th high school class reunion, the school songs of all the elementary schools, but Hutchinson were sung, until a group of us Hutchinson graduates to ask for equal time “in the interest of equal opportunity”. Hutchinson was actually a great school. We had a Public Library attached to the building and actually had a Literature Class where we were encouraged to read.