By Seth Daniel
In the City’s schools, when parents run late picking kids up from school, if they don’t have a relative close at hand, it can be an extremely stressful situation.
A parent can feel all alone, trapped unexpectedly in traffic or at work while their children need to be picked up.
At the Warren Prescott School (WP), however, parents who find themselves in that situation say they can text any number of parents at the school, and the situation can be resolved without worry.
That’s because the school has not only developed into a great educational choice for young students and parents, but also it has become a community where parents know each other and the teachers in a way that hearkens back to small-town America.
“I think it’s one of the most supportive communities for families here – to have connections at the Warren Prescott that transfer to sports and social networks,” said Suzanne Crowther, a current parent of first grader, Willa, at the school. “I’ve lived in Charlestown 20 years, but I came to the neighborhood as an adult and my husband and I don’t have any family here. I feel the same way about the Warren Prescott as I do about the whole neighborhood. I’m very comfortable with everyone. If I’m late to pickup, I can text any number of people who can pick my daughter up. That’s a small thing, but it’s a microcosm of what I love about Charlestown and the Warren Prescott.”
This Sunday, April 9, the Warren Prescott community, past and present, will come together for their 10th anniversary gala at Boston Beer Works on Canal Street in Boston. It will be as much a celebration of the past as the future, with the school mascot, the turtle, emphasized.
For parents like Tracy Shea, it was a whole different school when she was thinking about sending her kids there around 12 years ago. Her daughters, Sophie, 19, and Chloe, 17, were little girls and the prospect of school back then involved an expensive private school or leaving the Town for suburban schools.
Shea and a small group of parents bucked the trend, being in the first few waves of pioneering parents who turned back to the public schools and made the Warren Prescott into a neighborhood school once again.
“I was on the board of the Charlestown Mothers Association and the big topic of conversation when children got to school age was where people were going to move to,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to leave. I told them I decided to send Sophie to Warren Prescott and they were in shock. Back then, it was either move out of the Town or go only to private school. Those were the only options, or that’s what people thought. A small band of parents changed that. Now parents’ first options are public schools and not just Warren Prescott. We have three very good and viable public school options in Charlestown. Twelve years ago, people thought we had none.”