With all of our attention focused on fighting and surviving coronavirus, we can be excused for missing some good news around us.
Swampscott residents and town officials are moving forward with planning for a new elementary school. The town is long overdue to modernize schools for its youngest residents and the School Building Committee last week unveiled the real progress that is being made.
Five sites — Hadley Elementary School, Stanley Elementary School, Swampscott Middle School, Public Works yard and Phillips Park — are under review to be potential sites with committee members working hard to analyze each site’s pros and cons and seeking residents’ input on each site.
Decision time on paying for and building a new school won’t come until the 2021 Town Meeting, but we applaud the committee for holding numerous hearings on the school project and analyzing site selection in detail.
There is good news in Saugus, too. Work is ready to start on the town’s section of the 10.5-mile Northern Strand community trail with Saugus joining Everett, Malden, Lynn as a trail host community. Town Manager Scott Crabtree praised the “multi-community effort” involved in moving Saugus’ trail section from the drawing board to the construction phase. During the Great Depression, as people stood in bread lines and the glittering economy of the 1920s plummeted into the abyss, a plan gradually emerged to initially save the country and then revive it by putting people to work building anything and everything.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed public works projects across America and evidence of its contribution can be found on the corner of Eastern Avenue and Archer Street in Lynn where a WPA is embedded in the sidewalk.
The WPA and other New Deal agencies are long gone but projects unfolding in Swampscott, Saugus and other communities prove that Americans build for a better future even as they endure a terrifying present.
