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Wilkes-Barre police charge three with public drunkenness

Wilkes-Barre mother reports teenage daughter as a runaway

The board majority of the Wilkes-Barre Area School District is an equal-opportunity aggravator.All those who support neighborhood schools, less busing, enhanced education with lower enrollment and classical architecture/sound construction have been annoyed by the planned merger.Recently, the board has methodically aggravated the families of the three city high schools in turn: GAR was probably most content because everyone was leaving it alone. Then some in and out of the GAR sphere cried foul; maybe being ignored would leave them in a building &#8220;scheduled&#8221; for deterioration much in the way the Meyers physical plant was ignored. Maybe if they were not (literally) squeezed into the merger, the GAR students would lack the latest technology in the classroom. Honestly, the Heights community loses either way.The Meyers dilemma has been well-documented: Let&#8217;s move grades nine through 12 to a merged school shoe-horned into a busy downtown site using universal busing and abandon seven acres and the still-beautiful edifice in South Wilkes-Barre. Never mind that people moved to South Wilkes-Barre for the good neighborhood schools and the proximity of Kistler Elementary to the high school. Never mind the well-documented loss of property values with school closings or the specter of another abandoned historic property. Forget the unbelievable support Meyers enjoys from the community and alumni, and the associated student scholarships. Forget the ideal enrollment at Meyers, the favorable grade seven-to-12 model, or the poor educational and financial fate of mergers. That&#8217;s just what the board majority has done; they have forgotten all of this if they ever knew it.As for Coughlin, that community is not immune. Now after a huge faux pas (the board&#8217;s plan to use Coughlin&#8217;s annex for grades 11 and 12 while the old school is demolished and &#8220;new school&#8221; is under construction) has been abandoned. You see, the boiler plant is in the old school. And, of course, the new building must be placed on the downtown site just to complicate matters. So, now my alma mater&#8217;s upper classes are going to finish up in a trailer park for a mere $2.5 million.If the board wasn&#8217;t so persistent in a merged school downtown &#8211; and one must continue to ask &#8220;why?&#8221; &#8211; they could mothball the old building, maintain a campus with cafeteria, gym and amenities in the annex, and later reunite the students in a new seven-through-12 Coughlin High School built elsewhere, from my standpoint near Plains/Solomon. Then, folks, we could recoup some funds with the sale of the downtown property without demolition. Gradually, Meyers could be restored.If this board is not ready to admit its merger error, at least a better site would provide some campus-like facilities in the long run and the annex for Coughlin students in the interim.Mark F. SchiowitzWilkes-Barre

Letter to the Editor: Rethink plan for a merged high school in downtown Wilkes-Barre