Galvan Initiatives Foundation purchased the building in February 2012. For a while, it was considered as a possible new location for the Hudson Area Library, but the library board opted to stay with the Armory, the building Galvan had originally offered them.
This news, assuming it's true, raises a question: Can a building in the heart of the city's commercial thoroughfare, which has been the office of a newspaper for the last hundred and fifty years, be re-purposed as a school without a site plan review by the Planning Commission? There seem to be all manner of concerns attendant on this change of use. On the most practical level, where will the buses park--for it seems there have to be buses to bring kids in from Catskill and Canaan and places besides Hudson within the Hudson City School District--when students disembark in the morning and board in the middle of the afternoon?
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My guess is they will unload and load at JLE.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great first step to rejoining community and school. It won't be easy, as we have so disenfranchised one from the other over the last 50 years, but it's a terrific idea -- education on main street, where it belongs. We have torn down our neighborhood schools in the interests of some suburban/combustion-engine model. Can the buses fit? That can not be the standard. Drop the kids off at the lot across from the library; they can walk. Create a bike system for them. (Do we need Michael Bloomberg?) Instead of thinking of students/kids as aliens, let's start thinking of them as part of the community. How can the community accomodate them? How can it educate them? If gossip about the old Register Star building is true, this is very exciting; we have a chance to reclaim the building as a place to create what Jefferson called an "informed public." Knowledge counts. Hope springs eternal.
ReplyDeleteHere, here. And wasn't this education program accomplished without the hectoring, uninformed, bullying so emblematic of the Common Council and their addled, elected denizens? Enlightened self-interest in the private sector help make this school happen; let's give it ample public support to flourish and set an example. As Mr. Meyer avers, "Hope springs eternal..."
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