School district fields questions about Jenks ramp

Posted 3/23/16

by Kevin Dicciani

A representative from the School District of Philadelphia told the Development Review Committee of the Chestnut Hill Community Association and residents living along Ardleigh …

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School district fields questions about Jenks ramp

Posted

by Kevin Dicciani

A representative from the School District of Philadelphia told the Development Review Committee of the Chestnut Hill Community Association and residents living along Ardleigh Street that it would consider redesigns for the proposed ramp at Jenks Academy for the Arts and Sciences, but that budgetary issues may take precedence over the suggested alterations for the project.

On March 15, Danielle Floyd, deputy chief of staff for the school district, said the project was first designed in 2010, under the title “Emergency Ramp Capital Improvement Project.” When financial challenges arose for the district, she said the project was shelved indefinitely, along with a multitude of other projects. In 2015, the district reactivated the project and revised and scaled down its original objectives.

Floyd said the project design is complete. She said the district advertised the project, put it up for bid, and rewarded a contractor for its construction. When DRC board member Mark Keintz asked Floyd if the project design was subject to change, she said there was “an opportunity for feedback,” but the district would have to weigh the amount of comments calling for further alterations against the limited funds it’s allocated to use for the project.

The current project serves two functions, Floyd said. The first involves the construction of an entrance ramp on the Jenks’ campus, which will be gated and connected to Ardleigh Street, nearer to Gravers Lane than Southampton Avenue. Floyd said the ramp will give delivery, maintenance and emergency vehicles direct access to the school grounds.

The second facet entails moving the school’s dumpsters, located currently on the sidewalk of Ardleigh Street, onto the school’s property and inside an enclosed space off the sidewalk.

The garbage has been an important issue for nearby neighbors who say the dumpsters are illegally located on the sidewalk and are an unsanitary eyesore for those who live and pass by on the street. Under the project’s current design, the dumpsters will be relocated from the sidewalk near the existing driveway and moved further up the street, where, if this design is carried out, they would sit in a cutaway off the sidewalk directly across the street from homes.

Mary Lynskey, principal of Jenks, said “the ramp definitely facilitates delivery,” as the school currently has no loading dock and no consistent system for delivery. At the moment she said that deliveries, by FedEx and by private vendors, are sometimes left on the sidewalk by workers who are unwilling to climb up the thirty steps that lead to the school. This is a serious issue, Lynskey said, being as the deliveries often contain expensive educational materials for the students.

At the beginning of one four-day weekend, Lynskey said that FedEx, without obtaining a signature, delivered laptops and “dumped them on our schoolyard.” They sat there for four days with the words “lithium batteries” printed on the outside of the box, she said. Luckily, she said, the laptops weren’t stolen.

Another incident occurred two years ago, Lynskey said, when a box of PSSA testing materials, which are supposed to be under “lock and key,” were delivered and left in the middle of a schoolyard on a rainy Friday at 4 p.m. They weren’t discovered until Monday morning, she said.

“No one rang the bell, no one answered the delivery, they just walked away from it and signed ‘Mrs. Smith,’” Lynskey said. “Thank god we have no Mrs. Smith in our building, or it would’ve been our word versus theirs.”

Additionally, Lynskey said that one time $10,000 worth of furniture was delivered to the school. When the driver went inside and notified the school of the delivery, the office asked if he could carry the load inside. According to Lynskey, the driver said that it wasn’t his job to unload the truck.

“The gentlemen came in and said, ‘I only have to bring the truck here,’” Lynskey said. “He said, ‘You have no loading dock, I don’t deliver it – I just sit here.’”

Eighth graders had to help unload his truck on Germantown Avenue, Lynskey said. They had to carry the boxes up the steps, across the Children’s Park and into the building.

Lynskey said this is only one of many incidents where the burden of carrying deliveries fell onto the students. She said the school resorted to this option because if Jenks refuses the deliveries, the materials will go undelivered.

“That is not acceptable to us,” Lynskey said.

Nearby neighbors were concerned that the lot the ramp connects to on the campus would be used for faculty parking. One neighbor who lives on Ardleigh Street asked Floyd if she could dispel the rumor that the lot would be used for on-site parking. Floyd said the space “is not being used for parking.”

Laura Lucas, acting president of the Chestnut Hill Community Association, said that despite the neighbors who don’t want a parking lot built at the school, the district shouldn’t abandon the parking idea entirely. She said there are community issues that need to be addressed for the betterment of the neighborhood at large, such as cars clogging streets and limited parking.

“If the school has 40 teachers, and we can get 40 cars off the street, we’d be in much better shape,” Lucas said. “The town is getting more popular, and we’re just going to have more cars and more people visiting, and we really need to look at our parking.”

Most teachers now park on W. Southampton Avenue. Soon parking on the street will change to permit-only, and Lynskey said those teachers will now have to park elsewhere. Lucas said the various CHCA committees and the school district need to have an open dialogue regarding designs for the plan before anything definitive is done. She stressed that everyone needs to consider what's best for the community as a whole.

Patricia Cove, DRC board member and vice president of preservation for the Chestnut Hill Historical Society, said she was concerned about the historic stone wall that borders Jenks that would be removed to allow for the cutaway. She said she wanted to know its current and proposed elevation as well as the amount of stone that would need to be removed for the project. Floyd said that she didn’t know the exact details, but would provide those to the DRC as soon as possible.

The discussion then turned to the issue of the dumpsters being located on the sidewalk on Ardleigh Street. They have open lids and overflow with the garbage from the school and the Children’s Park. Larry McEwen, co-chair of the DRC, said the situation is “not the kind of thing that anyone would want in their neighborhood.”

Lynskey said the new design allows for a more direct route for the school to empty its trash. The entrance at the end of the existing driveway leads to a boiler room, Lynskey said, and to deposit the garbage in that driveway, workers would have to be bring it throughout the entire building, down into the boiler room, across it, up the steps, and out to the dumpsters. This is also an issue because Lynskey said the entrance way is a route that workers take to deliver food to the cafeteria, which is connected to the boiler room.

The new design would declutter the driveway and grant the school a more streamlined way to discard garbage, Lynskey said. The proposed cutaway near the campus’ sidewalk would permit workers to carry out the garbage through the exit door they currently use, walk across the schoolyard, and drop it into the dumpsters stored in the cutaway below, Lynskey said.

McEwen said the only positive aspect about the current scenario is that the dumpsters are at a location on the block where they don’t directly face a house. They are currently kept down the street, across from the Water Tower. But, if the new design is to become a reality, the dumpsters will be located up the street and stored closer to the homes across the way. He said that residents shouldn’t have to live in such close contact to the dumpsters, given that along with them comes rodents, bugs, smells and other unsightly elements.

The DRC recommended that the designs be changed so that the dumpsters can be relocated off the sidewalk and stored in the current driveway, in an enclosure of sorts. This way portions of the existing wall can remain intact and the garbage can be kept off the street and far away from the houses and pedestrians. The DRC even suggested that the district reconfigure the project to include a trash chute in that driveway, which they said would cost less and would be more effective than the present design.

Floyd said she would “take that feedback.”

She said, however, that the district’s budget is limited as is, and she would rather “not have to pay for another redesign.”

McEwen said that it’s critical that the various CHCA committees, the neighbors, and the school district begin an open dialogue about the project and its plans for redesign. He said he didn’t want this be another case where the district promises to include the community in on its plans, only to ignore their requests and advance the project forward without compromise.

Floyd said that if there’s a desire from the neighbors or the CHCA to have another meeting, the district would be willing to partake. Floyd said the district is waiting for building permits, but that she doesn’t know when they will be completed. As such, she said, there is time to contemplate alternative solutions for the ramp’s design and the dumpsters, as there in no date set for construction to begin.

Moving forward, Floyd said she would return to the district with the proposed changes and try to figure out a way to accommodate everyone’s requests. But again, she reiterated that the recommendations need to be reviewed and calculated against the district’s budget. If the changes turn out to be at a feasible price, they will present another redesign to the community.

McEwen said he wanted to have “an active working session” with the school district for the sake of improving both Jenks' campus and the neighborhood.

“We take the attitude that big picture is a very important thing,” McEwen said. “And for us, the broad community is the big picture, the number one thing.”

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