Caution on Suffolk school

A new site along Holland Road in western Suffolk is the latest in a long series of proposals for what to do about the deteriorating elementary schools in the city's south and west ends.

Robertson Elementary, the southernmost school in the city, was closed last summer in a cost-cutting move. Southwestern Elementary, out toward Holland, is old and irreparable.

For more than a decade, the city has toyed with how best to replace them.

School officials thought about rebuilding each school, a proposal designed to avoid damaging two historic towns. The plan dovetailed neatly with the city's growth and redevelopment plans. But it was too expensive and was eventually abandoned.

School officials also considered building a unified school someplace between Whaleyville and Holland, resulting in a school at a rural crossroads and long trips for hundreds of small kids. Officials also worried that a combined school would hollow out both villages.

A few years ago, officials discussed replacing Southwestern and renovating Robertson. In the end, they decided to close Robertson entirely, a decision based on dollars and cents and the continued cost of running a small school in a distant settlement.

But that didn't fix the problem.

Building an entirely new school at Pioneer Road and U.S. 58 is the latest solution.

The proposal, according to The Pilot's Hattie Brown Garrow, is the subject of a conditional-use permit filed by the school division. The new elementary school would serve 700 kids in a spot a few miles east of Holland.

That's both a recognition of the current orientation of the city population (toward downtown Suffolk), and where development is likely to flow in the future (west, along an overburdened U.S. 58).

There is plenty of precedent for putting a school on that highway. Forest Glenn Middle School and Lakeland High School are not far from the road.

But since they were built, traffic on U.S. 58 has steadily deteriorated. It's now one of the region's most congested roads. The city didn't help when it approved the region's largest intermodal cargo hub just down the street.

City and school officials should be extraordinarily careful about adding more cars - and buses - to an already congested road with no fix in sight.