To The Editor:
I am the parent of a former student at Public School 207, and am writing in response to the recent unsigned letter, “Not All Fun and Games.”
First of all, you come off as just a complainer. Do you have nothing better to do with your self? As far as living across the street from the school yard, you should have thought about that before you moved there. Everyone goes and buys a home across from a school, and then has nothing but complaints. Okay, now I didn’t see you mention how it’s your own neighborhood children that are doing all this damage. Maybe, Marine Park parents should take more control over their children and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing around them and actually looked at what their own children are doing. As for the 63rd Precinct, maybe if they weren’t the parents of the neighborhood kids, something more would be done about it also.
So, how do you come off blaming the custodial staff of PS 207 is beyond me. I didn’t hear you once complain that it was your child in there, or your neighbor’s child.
While my child attended that school up until now, I know that the custodial staff does its best. Should custodians follow your neighborhood kids around cleaning up after them? If they spent that much time keeping after your neighborhood kids, how would they get their work done? Oh, wait then you would have something else to complain about. I know for a fact that they put in 9-12 hour days, they do the best they can they have a work schedule to follow just like everyone else. With budget cuts their work load is already heavier and there are time slots in which the work has to get done. They do their best. I think they do a good job.
As for locking gates, yes, the gates were supposed to be locked at dusk even though your neighborhood kids cut them down to get in, but your Marine Park community fought to have them opened so that the neighborhood kids could have a place to go to play instead of a parent actually taking their child to a park, like other community parents do.
So, there was no lie about the gates except that you forgot that yes it was your neighbors that fought to keep them left open.
As for graffiti in the yard, yes once again done by neighborhood kids, but I know for a fact that in the past it was far from ignored that it was painted over every single morning. There were no complaints for fear that parents, or children, would get paint on them.
As for complaints from parents of the neighborhood regarding a gate with profanity, once again, neighborhood children cut through the gate that, once again, needed to be fixed, because the custodial staff, once again, has to clean up after neighborhood kids.
What’s to say how the neighborhood kids put the profanity there after it was hung? So let’s see, the neighborhood parents refuse to take control over their children and they expect the custodial staff to follow them around and clean up after them.
Who is the better neighbor? The custodial staff for keeping up with neighborhood kids, or the chronic complainer.
Name Withheld
Upon Request
