credit: Cary Shuman


The students in the Advent School sixth grade class of teachers Neil Taylor and Amanda Golden are an energetic and environmentally conscious group.

Inspired by a story in the media about the Boston City Council wanting to ban the use of plastic shopping bags because they represent “a hazard to the environment and a maddening blight of the landscape,” the students launched a “social action project” to support the ban and publicize the issue to Beacon Hill merchants and residents.

“We’re trying to get the city of Boston to ban plastic bags,” said student Beth Minahan. “The reason that we’re doing this is because plastic bags are really bad for the environment in so many ways. They take a really long time to biodegrade. They litter the streets and trees. The bags can choke animals in the sea and on land.”

The students’ efforts include a letter-writing campaign to public officials, and distribution of reusable bags to local merchants and families of students at the school. They are also distributing re-useable bags to merchants and the families.

“We’re trying to give the legislators more reasons to pass the law,” said Abe Gobel. “Other cities are also trying to or have already banned plastic bags.”

Alirio Gomes said he and classmates traveled throughout the city photographing plastic bags that were found caught in trees and bushes. “We’ll be doing a presentation for parents, during which we’ll be displaying the photos and explaining why the plastic bags are bad for the environment,” said Gomes.

Grace Coviello, who with classmates Nia Rivera and Isabella Schumann wrote a letter to The Beacon Hill Times about their class’ efforts on the issue, said the class purchased 200 green re-useable bags to give away. “We made these little braids out of old plastic bags and we’re going to put quick facts on them about plastic bags and reuseable bags, ” said Coviello. “It’s probably going to help lower the amount of plastic bag usage.”

How did the class raise the money for the purchase of the 200 reuseable bags?

“We’ve been doing fundraisers as a class,” said Andrew Zick. “We made a mini-school store and sold t-shirts and sweatshirts. We also received donations from people who were connected to the school, such as Celtics tickets and spa gift certificates. We had a raffle and with the funds raised, we purchased 200 bags at a cost of one dollar per bag. Every family in the school is going to receive at least one bag.”

Jasmine Turnbull said the class will soon visit Charles Street businesses. “We’re going to talk with business owners about how plastic bags are bad for the environment and why they should use re-useable bags,” said Turnbull. “We’re asking businesses like Whole Foods why they use reuseable and what gave them the idea to do it.”

“We’ll also be giving out fliers and fact sheets to businesses and before the school year ends, we’re going to go back and see if they made any changes in their policy or if they’ve started talking to their customers about reuseable bags,” said Yasmin Francis.

Boston City Councillor Rob Consalvo, a supporter of the ban, visited the school Tuesday to discuss the issue with the students. He also invited the students to attend a council hearing and speak on the issue.

In a city where more and more young families are choosing to raise their families, there is space in the public school system for little more than 1000 four-year-olds — which some think may be less than a quarter of city children in that age group.

Private preschool programs in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill and Charlestown are filling up fast, causing parents to worry about whether there will be room for their children in pre-school.

Mayor Thomas Menino wants something done about this, and for the last ten years has called for the expansion of early childhood education. In 1995 the schools first offered free full-day kindergarten classes for children and special classes for preschoolers. Next year it will add 350 more preschool seats.

But before expanding, City Council President Maureen Feeney wants to take a closer look at what’s going on in the city’s preschools today. According to her spokesman, she is particularly interested in discussing the status of the preschools in relation to findings reported in a study on the state of Boston’s early childhood education, recently released by the Wellesley Centers for Women. That study found the education to be flawed and inadequate in successfully preparing preschool- and kindergarten-aged children for moving ahead.

The Wellesley Centers, which brings together an interdisciplinary community of scholars to engage in research and analysis, studied 128 city classrooms and found that 70 percent had not achieved the Boston Public School System’s own goal of getting children up to speed for first grade. It also found that more than 50 of the schoolyards were deemed dangerous due to the lack of adequate fencing to protect the younger children from parking lots and busy city streets.

To discuss those issues and to learn about the city’s long range growth plan, Feeney has called for a public hearing with Boston educators. It will take place before the City Council’s committee on education Wednesday, May 30, at 2:30 p.m. in Boston City Hall.

CAPTION: Workers recently installed windows in the former jail.

CREDIT: Suzanne Besser




The Liberty Hotel was supposed to open in June, but its opening has been pushed back to August, according to the hotel’s spokesperson, Katie Archambault. Nevertheless, passers-by can now get an excellent idea of what it will look like when finished.

The $120 million Carpenter & Co. has spent in renovating the 1851 granite jail and adding a new 16-story brick-clad building adjacent to it will result in 300 guestrooms, 6,000 square feet of meeting space and a vast rotunda that will knock your socks off, according to Peter Diana of Carpenter & Co.

“It is going to be a meeting place for the community,” he said.

Ninety feet above the floor of the rotunda is a new cupola, constructed according to the original design which was never built because of high mid-19th century construction costs.

Neighbors are probably most interested in what’s in it for them. A bar, to be managed by a vendor that hasn’t been announced, will spill out onto a terrace across from the Charles/MGH T station. A restaurant, also run by an outside vendor, will have outdoor seating in the courtyard formed by the jail’s western extension and the new addition. Inside on the second floor, the hotel itself will have a combination restaurant/bar. An executive chef, Michael Goodman, has been chosen to run that facility.

An attractive ballroom can play host to all kinds of parties, including neighborhood events and weddings. The original jail cells are visible in several parts of the original building, which adds to its drama.

The owners and the spokespeople are obsessed with jail metaphors and puns. “When it’s all finished, you’ll not mind doing some time there,” they say.

Stats on the Liberty Hotel:

Pounds of concrete used: 5,516,100
Number of tiles in between the escalators: 34,560
Number of windows in the Presidential Suite: 10
Number of jail cells demolished: 152
Tons of steel used in the renovation and addition: 1,600
Number of feet of VoIP cable? 158,000
Number of pieces of bluestone in the courtyard: 390
Number of man hours it will have taken to build the hotel: 420,000

In honor of her twenty years of service, the Hill House board of directors presented Meredith Clapp of Charles River Square with the first annual ‘Meredith P. Clapp Community Outreach Award.’ The award was given in recognition of her dedication and commitment to the local community and her unwavering devotion to serving others at a surprise party on Wednesday, May 16. Each year, Hill House plans to present the award to a community member who best exemplifies these qualities and will make a donation to the charitable organization of the recipient’s choice. A past president of Hill House, Clapp stepped down from the board this year.

Musing on walking

Walking in Boston has a lot to commend it. We’ve got routes through parks, down boulevards, and near shop windows. Throughout all of the city’s history, Bostonians have walked. Almost 400 years ago Boston wasn’t built for the car, and, on many streets, it still isn’t.

Bostonians have recently begun walking through the new Greenway, which is far enough along to imagine what it will look like by the end of the summer, when most of it will be in place.

It was surprising, amid the mysterious blade-like structures that line one park, the acres of bright granite, the fine trellises and the newly planted lavender, to come upon a very old-fashioned, low-tech and uniquely Boston piece of equipment — a button that walkers must push if they want to get a legal time period to cross the street.

Shouldn’t pedestrian buttons be passé now that we’re in the 21st century? Can’t Bostonians move on into a high tech world, ditching such antiquated and unfathomable features as the red and yellow lights that used to appear simultaneously to let pedestrians know they had a chance to walk? (You have to be a certain age to remember that one. Only a few such intersections are left.)

Transportation department officials maintain that the buttons are actually pedestrian friendly. They say that pedestrians now get their own walk lights automatically at most intersections, so they really no longer need the button. They’ve installed the button, they claim, so that pedestrians can override the system and get a pedestrian signal sooner than they otherwise would.

The question is: should we believe them?

On their side is that most of them are a jovial bunch who, like us, are forced to walk because they can’t find a parking place for cars any more than we can.

They also have taken some recent steps to better our pedestrian lives. They’ve installed countdown lights at many intersections, which let us know how much time we have to cross an intersection before cars start mowing us down. Traffic planners are finally making it legal for walkers and cars heading in parallel directions to proceed through intersections at the same time. This is known as concurrent phasing, it shortens wait times for both pedestrians and vehicles, and is practiced in virtually every other American city as well as foreign ones.

But as much as Boston’s traffic planners historically have believed they were looking out for our interests, Boston’s pedestrians thought otherwise.

Almost no one believes the push buttons work. Since pedestrians think they’ll never get a walk light, they just cross willy-nilly at any time and any place.

Moreover, pedestrians have endured many years of traffic planners appearing to promote vehicle movement over pedestrian movement. The city will plow streets but not sidewalks after snowstorms. The T, which pedestrians make use of, keeps raising its rates, while drivers get a free ride. So walkers have a hard time believing that the city is doing anything that works in their favor.

But this time, it might be true. The buttons might actually work. They might over-ride the system. We believe it partly because in intersections that have new systems, the traffic control office in City Hall can also over-ride the automatic pedestrian phase at 2 a.m., for example, when few pedestrians are likely to be out.

For the first time ever, we see a glimmer of hope for pedestrians. We may still believe that pressing the buttons doesn’t work, but at least a walk light — possibly with that helpful countdown — will eventually appear.