MTA project draws ire from residents
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has caused tens of millions of dollars in estimated property value impacts to Garden City, based on research and actual sales data, and damaged our quality of life [“Holding up LIRR hurts the region,” Editorial, July 23]. Our village intends to fight.
It shredded a mile-long stretch of lush greenery that obscured the rails with a hellscape of massive electric transmission and distribution poles and wires mere feet from our children’s bedrooms. It ignored its own promises concerning utility burial and placing transmission lines on the industrial north side of the tracks.
The Third Track project has somehow left our suburban train station louder, brighter and uglier than before. The MTA has left unprotected debris and construction materials on village grounds for years, ignored promises to use satellite parking, shut down roads, dangerously rerouted school buses without notice, left unsafe gaps in retaining walls, and decimated green space.
Residents support this project. We understand its benefits but lament the way the MTA has pursued it and disfigured our neighborhoods. Now it aims to level our historic stone bridge, use our property and expose a nearby ecologically sensitive nature preserve to ongoing noise, vibration and light pollution. Garden City sought more information and a common path forward, but instead the MTA sued.
— Richard F. Corrao Jr., Garden City
The writer is president of ReVAMP (Resident Voters Against Monster Poles) and a member of the Garden City Third Track Committee.
Some adults act like teens over masks
I am glad that many Long Island school districts will spotlight mental health this school year [“More schools focus on mental health,” News, Aug. 9]. I am lucky that my five young grandchildren have adapted to wearing masks beautifully, in part because they see how their parents wear masks to protect themselves. Unfortunately, they are too young to get a COVID-19 vaccine, but schools will be doing their best for them when they return. Teenagers, though, are a whole different ball game.
As teenagers, we were determined to be independent.
Most of us have grown up to become responsible, but some of us adults feel it is necessary to demonstrate our independence by “haranguing” our school boards and superintendents. I wonder how much of this behavior affects our children? Do they feel safe? Do they feel conflicted about the rhetoric in their own home?
The guest essay from Dr. Charles Schleien says, yes, children are also “nervous and unsure” [“Raise vaccine rates to reopen schools,” Opinion, Aug. 9]. At the very least, aren’t masks an easy fix?
Kudos to the school districts that are hiring staff to address the pandemic’s mental health side effects.
— Susan Hennings-Lowe, Huntington
With schools focusing more on the mental health of students by hiring psychologists as well as other professionals, it’s obvious that schools are becoming more involved with the rearing of students, and so consequently, parents and other relatives of these students need to be less involved.
How long will it be before the only role that parents and other relatives will take in raising children is providing them a place to sleep at night?
— Thomas W. Smith, Riverhead
Figure out ‘right fit’ before college trips
Randi F. Marshall argues that college road trips are essential to figuring out whether a college and student “fit” [“Pandemic tests college admissions,” Opinion, July 27].
In my own practice as an independent college counselor, however, I recommend that families figure out “fit” long before any out-of-state road trips take place. Not only are such trips expensive, if undertaken before a student conducts her due diligence, they can overwhelm and discourage even earnest students.
Instead, I encourage parents of ninth- and 10th-graders to take their children to a variety of institutions within an hour or two of home. Aim for all the permutations of: small, medium, large; urban, suburban, rural; public, private. Long Islanders might visit Stony Brook University (large, suburban, public) in September; New York University (large, urban, private) in October; Sarah Lawrence College (small, suburban, private) in November, and so on.
By the time your child is a high school upperclassman, aim for knowing which three characteristics of a college represent the “right fit.”
Then, when you make more expensive road or plane trips, you would visit only colleges that already fall into their preferred category, saving time and money.
— Dominique Padurano, Bohemia
