By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY — A team of Orchard Hill Elementary School PTA members and parents of children attending the Kid Connection pre-school expressed their opposition to the location of a parking lot the school district is seeking to build on space shared by the two schools.
They addressed safety, quality of life and environmental effects they think building the parking lot will have during the public comment session of Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting. The parents also accused the school board of taking too long to make them aware of their plans.
The school district, which has already submitted plans for building the 100-space parking lot on the north side of the Orchard Hill Elementary School to the state Department of Education, tabled making a decision on whether or not to submit paperwork to the state necessary for completing the project.
”I’m not comfortable moving forward with the resolution if we want to put the meat on the bones to reconsider it,” said board member Andrea Bradley. “If we’re going to have to put the meat on the bones to reconsider it, we’re going to have to redesign it.”
Kid Connection parents and Orchard Hill Elementary School PTA members said that while both schools need more parking, they’d prefer to see the board wait until they have the money to redo the existing parking lot on the east side of Orchard Elementary School before it adds spaces. Orchard Hill currently has about 88 parking spaces and Kid Connection, which is located northwest of Orchard Hill, has about 60.
”If I were to look at this property, this is the last place that I would put it (the parking lot),” said Jane Griesinger, vice president of the PTA and parent of a Kid Connection student. “I always thought additional parking on this property was going to go into that east lot. …
”We can wait for more parking,” she added. “I think that putting in a short-term solution parking lot that will cost $400,000 and will always be there is not how the board should be spending its money,” she said.
Parents said the new parking lot would be closer to Kid Connection than the Orchard Elementary School’s existing parking lot, something they opposed. The large amount of traffic already present on the Kid Connection side of the school when parents are walking their small children into the pre-school building makes the proposed location a dangerous place to build a parking lot, they said.
The approximately half acre of green space the parking lot would consume was another issue parents had with the proposed location for the parking lot. The area designated for the parking lot includes portions of a grass field, a playground and some paved space. Parents said children from both schools play on the grass field during recess, gym and after school and that the space is heavily used for township summer camps.
