To the Editor:
We were so pleased to see the Dartmouth paper covering the proposed sale of the downtown high school to the college. We moved back to Hanover recently with our two kids (ages three and five) to raise them in a walking village. We were completely dismayed to find the College offering an $18,000,000 subsidy to move the high school out of town.
Public education has been an anchoring institution in downtown Hanover for over 200 years. We feel integrating our teenagers into our mixed-use center is a critical part of Hanover's defining sense of community and public life. The Lebanon Street site is the only public open space left in downtown (the Dartmouth Green, as lovely as it is, is private property). The high school is a proud historic building greeting visitors as a symbol of a thriving town co-existing with a thriving college. A renovated or expanded high school could develop an even stronger public crossroads and community meeting place.
Conversely, moving the high school to the middle of a scenic field off Reservoir Road will only encourage a pattern of suburban sprawl that will adversely impact one of New England's finest towns. It will result in more driving, more traffic, more air pollution and the loss of a major open space in the Girl Brook watershed. It will isolate our kids in an auto-dependent setting.
We believe many in the Dartmouth community share these values for small town public life and environmental conservation. We encourage Dartmouth to look beyond its own narrow self-interests and realize the significant long-term interest it has in supporting a healthy small town life. We encourage the college to find a way to support the historic partnership of town and gown by being part of a solution to retain our downtown high school rather than underwriting its demise. A workable solution depends on us all putting our heads together to make it happen.
