Finding Entrances to New Quincy Schools Makes MCAS Look Easy

– News about Quincy MA from Quincy Quarry.

Quincy High School Back Door – A Quincy Quarry Photo

Finding the entrances to new Quincy schools makes the MCAS look easy.

Quincy Public Schools students and especially their parents face enough problems without having to figure out how to find the entrance ways to the two newest schools in town.

Whether – or not – such is causing truancy and tardiness Quincy Quarry was not able to discern.  Reasons include various student privacy issues as well as illegible dog ate them parents’ notes to teachers.

That and helicopter mothers demanding local schools impose security measures that long ago the Transportation Safety Administration (“TSA”) was ordered by the courts to cease as unconstitutional intrusions upon one’s privacy.

Grand old QHS Entrance – A Wikicommons photo

Easily the worst problems are at new Quincy High School. Unlike old Quincy High School, which had a clear and grand set of granite steps leading to its front entrance, the actual main entrance to new Quincy High is nowhere near as obvious.

The seemingly obvious entrance way at the corner of Huntley Road and Woodward Avenue is not the main entrance as Quincy High School’s official address is 100 Coddington Street, and thus the  other side of school.

Alternatively, neither is the seemingly designated main entrance point facing Coddington Street the main entrance.

Quincy Quarry was further unable to secure a clear idea as to the actual main entrance point to the high school given the obvious potential for criminal charges of stalking minors.

Seeming designated entrance, left; busy entrance, right.
Conjoined Quincy Quarry News images

As such, it thus had to rely on an outside of school time following of paper makeshift black and white signs in school windows so as to endeavor to find the apparent primary front security entrance way into the new high school.

Further disconcerting is the situation at new Central Middle School.

The new Central has an official physical address of 875 Hancock Street, however, its main entrance is on St. Ann’s Road.

Central Middle Side Street Front Door – A Quincy Quarry Photo

While the architectural design of Central’s main entrance is appropriately obvious as a main entrance, unlike the case at Quincy High, Saint Ann’s Road no longer has anything to do with Saint Ann, much less does this church-based naming of a secular public street appear consistent with the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Or Google Maps.

One can only hope that the pending replacement of old Sterling Middle School will feature a design that makes entrance into it much less confusing.

Then again, such curious entrance design and confusing official address designation of Quincy Public Schools dates back to at least the 1975 construction of Lincoln-Hancock Elementary.  This school has its primary entrance way and parking lot on Water Street but an official street address of 300 Granite Street and which is not all that obviously a stretch of Granite Street.

Currently outside of a FEMA flood zone old Sterling Middle School

As the pending new Sterling will likely be built behind the current school’s location – also ironically on Granite Street but at least far more obviously so – on school’s athletic field behind the school and which abuts Roberts Street.

In short, new confusion can only be expected.

Further, how the new middle school might be sited on the field should further prove interesting as it is within a new 2014 FEMA flood zone area whereas the current school building is not.

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