Ian Nicholas, Reporter
@IanNicholas25
In the time of an unprecedented global pandemic, high schools across the nation are making major changes in order to execute a safe and successful school year. NCHS has put plenty of protocols in place to try and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on school grounds. Everyone has to wear a mask when inside the building, desks in classrooms are spaced-out to provide social distancing, and there’s a bottle of hand-sanitizer in everywhere you look. There’s a more elaborate list of health procedures and actions taken by the school that I could mention, but I’m not here to bore you.
In fact, I’m not writing about anything COVID or health related. Instead, I’ll take a deep dive into one of the school’s newest features: the Waveny Park entrance. There have been plenty of emails sent from the school with details of this new school feature, including maps and photos of the newly paved road that connects the ‘senior lot’ to New Canaan’s well-known park. Yet, many around campus have yet to realize its potential. I spoke to a number of NCHS upperclassmen, as well as some teachers, to see the early impact of the newest innovation our school has to offer.
One problem that is caused by both the high school and grades 7-8 having the same start time is the traffic that builds up on Farm Road in the morning. Luckily, Senior Austin Platt believes the new entrance has already made a dent in breaking this standstill up. “When I get to school at 7:15, there’s less traffic for sure on Farm Road,” he said.
A big selling point with the new entrance was the fact that it would ease traffic in both the morning and afternoon, regardless of where you were coming from or leaving to. Fellow Senior Matt Benevento agrees with Platt’s statement about the lessened traffic and the positive impact it has on his commute to school, even though Benevento lives on the opposite side of town. He said, “The new entrance allows for a convenient exit and entrance to school, while cutting traffic in half. Because of it, I’ve hit almost zero traffic on the way to school and on my way out. The road’s a great addition to the NCHS entrance and exit system.”
Student Body President Alex Kurz is also all-in on the new entrance. “It was a great addition because it evens out the traffic flow,” she said. “Not many people take advantage of it because it’s so much easier and convenient to go out the front entrance. But for me, a really impatient person, it’s nice to just go right out of the back where there’s no line to leave.”
High school upperclassmen have fallen in the routine of using the main entrance every single day, and Kurz pointed out that not enough people are taking advantage of the Waveny entrance just yet. But this new entrance has the future of NCHS in mind. This project had been in the works for years, according to Principal Egan, and this entrance has always been seen as a terrific long-term investment that future NCHS classes and staff will use for years to come.
Junior Brendan Tiscornia is a first time driver this school year, and he’s already scared of the traffic in the parking lot. He told me that he doesn’t even park in the lot, instead parking over at Waveny, then walking to the school from there. He also believes, like Kurz, that not enough people are taking advantage of the new entrance, instead settling for the familiarity of the old entrance for now. He thinks this will change soon, however. “I feel like a majority of people will come to use it in order to avoid traffic,” he said. In a world where the newest students don’t know what a normal high school year looks like, when they begin to drive, they will learn to use both the front and back entrances of the high school equally.
Even District Technician Shane Smith, who commutes daily from Darien, has seen instant results from this new feature. “It makes the traffic pattern flow smoothly. If you leave Waveny you have multiple exits to choose from and it also helps the traffic heading to South Ave,” he said. Not only is the traffic being slashed on Farm Road, but also from South Ave. As Smith said, the new entrances provide more convenient exits through Waveny that give students and adults alike more exits that make the most sense for where they’re headed.
The school commute is not a hard one for me, considering that I live a solid 2 minutes away from school in the middle of Main Street. When I use the Waveny entrance, however, it truly speeds up the process. I was able to grab lunch in town and come back through the same Waveny entrance in just a 20 minute span, making it on time to my class after 1st lunch. I will admit that I don’t use the new entrance enough, and as a senior I’ve become too comfortable with the main entrance. As the year progresses, though, I will definitely find myself using the new entrance more and more to avoid the insane traffic that seems to build up before and after school on both Farm Road and South Ave. This simple paved road id a major step forward for our school, one that’ll definitely change how kids, staff, and visitors drive through the parking lot for years to come, well beyond my graduation.
