The Parks Commission gave approval for Common Ground High School to build a a secure, permanent out-of-doors structure, with fresh air blowing through, and large enough for a class all to be under the roof.
The commission granted the approval Wednesday night at its regular monthly meeting, convened over the Zoom teleconferencing app.
The Parks Commission is legally the landlord of the charter high school, which lies up in the bucolic northwest corner of town at the foot of West Rock. Teacher and Common Ground management team member Joel Tolman came before the commissioners to ask formal permission to replace a 20-by-40-foot tent structure in the middle of the campus with a a permanent 20-by-50 pavilion.
The $30,000 pavilion, to be paid for entirely through the federally based community development block grant (CDBG) funds, will be “large enough to accommodate a school trip, or a high school class with social distancing,” Tolman reported.
The proposed four-season pavilion will replace the current structure, basically a tent, that is good only during the warmer seasons and has to be taken down in the snow. (The school did not have sketches of the new pavilion available.)
The tent will be repositioned and repurposed, Tolman said, resulting in a net gain of of facilities for the kids and the campus.
Commissioner Kevin Walton cited a Common Ground summer camp that is too pricey, he said, for lots of New Haven kids. He asked Tolman to address how the new pavilion and indeed the whole school is benefiting local kids.
Tolman said the charter high school’s population is comprised of 70 percent New Haven kids. “That’s our top priority,” Tolman reported, with many of those kids hailing from the nearby West Rock neighborhood.
“You’re right,” Tolman said, about the summer camp. But it helps subsidize the other programs of the high school, which is also organized as a stand-alone city nonprofit, he said.
“Five thousand New Haven kids come for school trips” every year, Tolman said, “and we’re trying to sustain all that in the pandemic.”
He also said that food grown on the school’s farms and from other sources has been gathered during the pandemic to feed approximately 200 area families.
“There’s a lot more we can still do to be good neighbors, and that’s something we’re leaning into,” he concluded.
The vote in favor of permitting the pavilion was unanimous.
The contractor submitting the winning bid is Connecticut-based, Tolman reported.The completion date could be as early as the end of July.
