Middle School Walkers Walking A Thin Line With Businesses

By Nancy K. Crevier

Newtown is encountering its own version of the mid-1900s public service announcement, “It’s 10 pm: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?” Except the question is, where are the children at 2 pm? Most of the 900 students who attend Newtown Middle School dutifully jump aboard the buses for a ride home when the school day is over. Over the years, though, the number of students who choose to “walk” has increased and where they walk to and what happens at those locations has become a source of frustration for businesspeople and other customers in the center of town.

The “walkers” by and large are not walking to their homes or the homes of friends when they leave the school grounds. Allotted a bit of freedom by trusting guardians, they head for nearby places of business to mingle with their schoolmates. For some, that privilege is proving to be more than they are ready to handle.

Once the children are released from school, the staff at the middle school really has no control over where students go or what they do. But Newtown Middle School Principal Diane Sherlock is aware of the impact that the “walkers” have on centrally located businesses — and not all of it is good.

Monday through Thursday, if there are 50 students who leave school on foot it would be a lot, says Ms Sherlock. Fridays, however, are a different story. “The kids who are walking wait in the cafeteria for dismissal, so we can see how many there are.” The number of students walking on Fridays, she estimates, is nearly triple any other school day.

“Middle school-aged kids love being with their friends,” she notes.

Where they love being with their friends on a Friday afternoon is at the businesses that sell the other things adolescent kids love — food and drink. That means that businesses like the Big Y Supermarket, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Bagel Delight are target destinations for the high-spirited youngsters that descend in droves at 2 pm.

There are a number of things that differentiate Friday afternoon from the other four school days, according to the school principal. “Friday is considered the start of the weekend and normally there are no activities after school on Friday,” explains Ms Sherlock. Newtown Middle School has tried in the past to implement Friday afternoon activities, but has found that between finding adults to organize an activity on the last day of the work week and students willing to participate, the idea does not fly.

Monday through Thursday many students take part in the nearly two dozen after-school activities offered. “We have clubs and programs that appeal to a wide range of kids, not just those who are involved in sports,” says Ms Sherlock. Math Team, literary clubs, community oriented groups, music, drama, and art are just a few of the offerings, for example. A late bus runs Monday through Thursday, as well, providing students with transportation home after meetings. Come Friday, though, says Ms Sherlock, the middle school options are rare beyond one of the four Friday evening dances sponsored during the school year.

“Most of the kids who come in here are sweet and good,” says Dunkin’ Donuts owner Jeff Dymerski. The ones he has come to appreciate less are those who are obnoxious and rude. “Sometimes they get too loud,” he says of the students who take up every seat in the shop many afternoons. “They don’t listen when we ask them to tone it down.” Spitballs garnishing the wall and ceiling are a common discovery when the crowd thins out, he says.

Some of his employees would rather work the early morning shift than deal with the influx of youngsters at 2 pm; nor do his employees, many of whom are not far beyond the middle school years themselves, trust the adolescent customer. As a rule, they now remove the tip cups from the counters at 2 pm to prevent theft. Waiting on indecisive young customers can be frustrating, as well.

“Kids slow down the service. They can’t decide, they discover they don’t have enough money so then it starts a chain of asking friends to front them, stuff like that. They’re just kids, but there are so many of them,” says Mr Dymerski. As a businessman, Mr Dymerski is grateful for the money the young people spend but needs to balance that with the effect they have on his business neighbors and older customers.

What concerns him most, though, are the number of children who linger at Dunkin’ Donuts waiting for a ride.

“I do feel a little like a babysitting service. Some parents pick up their kids, some don’t. I have some kids who stay two or three hours until they are picked up,” says Mr Dymerski. He cannot help but feel a little responsible for those middle schoolers. “I try to keep an eye on them, but I can’t always.”

‘It’s Their Social Life’

Neither the children nor the parents are breaking any laws, says Newtown Middle School Resource Officer Gladys Pisani. “The kids actually have as much a right as anyone to be in town,” she says. Officer Pisani notes that Connecticut state law states that no children under the age of 12 can be left unsupervised. “It depends on the maturity of the kids, though, of course,” she adds.

For preteens and teenagers, visiting local businesses is like a “night out” for this age group, says Officer Pisani. “It’s their social life.”

Businesspeople do not want to file complaints, she says, but have made the police department aware of their concerns, resulting in increased periodic patrols to the central area of town.

“On the one hand, it is nice that we have a town where parents feel okay about letting kids be in the town, but the kids have no right to intimidate other customers or to be threatening in any way.” She hopes that any businesses who experience theft or other behavior that is detrimental to their business will contact the police department.

Tony Posca welcomes the middle school masses that trek in and out of Andrea’s Bake Shop on Queen Street, where he gives away free doughnuts after school. “I’ve never had a problem,” he says. “[The students] come in, get their doughnut, and leave.” Perhaps it is because he is closing up for the day when school gets out, leaving no opportunity for kids to hang out, he says, that he has no issues with the young people. Just across the street at the Big Y Supermarket, however, it is a different story.

Store manager Bob Rainville says that the hour that follows the release of Newtown Middle School is “a nightmare. Every day we get between 10 and 30 kids from the middle school in here, and dozens more on a Friday afternoon. Friday is the worst.”

Unlike Dunkin’ Donuts, the middle schoolers are not spending money at The Big Y, says Mr Rainville. “Some might buy a drink or a slice of pizza, but most do not. They even bring in drinks from other places and meet their friends just to hang out in the food court,” says Mr Rainville.

The majority of young people behave, but up to 30 percent, he says, are out of control. “They get into food fights in the food court, they wrestle with each other, they’re stealing things, running through the other departments knocking stuff over. They are even laying down and making out on the benches,” he laments.

Because of customer complaints, he now assigns four or five managers to help him police the area near the food court between 2 pm and 3 pm. It is not uncommon for the managers to have to ask at least 15 youngsters each day to leave because of their poor behavior.

“I hate to call in the police,” says Mr Rainville, but occasionally a poor response from those asked to leave has forced him to do so. Always vigilant about shoplifting, Mr Rainville says that up to now shoplifters have simply been banned from the premises. “It hasn’t seemed to have an impact, though, so we will be prosecuting in the future,” he warns.

“Ideally, I wish there was a better place for these kids to hang out. This is a place of business,” says Mr Rainville. “You don’t want to alienate anyone, but we have a responsibility to our other customers to create a pleasant environment. In a perfect world, the kids would come in, buy something, and respect the atmosphere.”

A Rite Of Passage

“It’s the nature of the beast,” says Bagel Delight owner Eunice Laverty, referring to the high energy level of middle school students, “and I don’t think that is going to change.” It is an attitude for which the youngsters should probably be grateful, as Ms Laverty patiently accommodates groups that range in size anywhere from a dozen Monday through Thursday afternoons to easily five times that number after school on Fridays.

“Coming to businesses in the center of town is almost a rite of passage,” says Ms Laverty. “The middle schoolers are young adults and now they have this freedom and the proximity of the school to the businesses. They are old enough to go out alone and have that responsibility.”

Like other businesspeople, Ms Laverty observes that some young people handle that responsibility better than others. It is the maturity level of each group that dictates behavior, she says, and she has seen the fluctuation in maturity levels from year to year in her nearly 12 years of business on Church Hill Road. “Every year it’s a different climate,” she says. Over the years there have been bouts of shoplifting at her shop, but not to the degree that she has ever felt compelled to call the police. “It’s just one or two kids, really,” she says.

Respect is a two-way street at Bagel Delight, says Ms Laverty. “We do need to remind kids that there are other places of business in this building. The majority of the kids are respectful. We try to encourage their responsibility, we try to work with them. You do have to get in the middle of the kids,” says this former social worker.

Ms Laverty understands her other customers’ impatience when a long line of indecisive young people throws a monkey wrench in the works. But her willingness to work with her younger regulars has paid off in that she has come to an understanding with them. “Sometimes they will be asked to wait while other customers are waited on,” she says. “Really, kids just want to be together. So they don’t mind waiting.”

As at Dunkin’ Donuts, Ms Laverty frequently sees children left at her place of business to wait one or more hours for a ride home. Occasionally, there is still a child waiting when Bagel Delight closes at 5 pm. “We have given kids rides. We just want to make sure everyone is safe,” she says. “You know, lots of families, both parents work, schedules are hard to juggle, someone thinks that someone else is doing the pick up… things happen.” She is willing to accommodate situations that a larger, corporate business may not be able to, she says.

Accommodating the youth does not mean accepting unacceptable behavior, though. When a large number of students are lingering outside of the storefront as well as inside, Ms Laverty makes sure that an employee is outside keeping an eye on things. “You need to intervene before things get out of hand. We ask the kids to clean up any mess they make, too, and after some encouragement they usually cooperate. We just hand them a garbage bag and I stand there until they clean up any mess they make.”

She can recall a few instances in which young people have out and out refused to pick up or have been disrespectful to her. In those cases, other regular customers have stepped in, sometimes successfully, other times not.

“But can you imagine how the parent felt when they came to get their kid and an adult they didn’t know came up to their car to tell them how disrespectful their child had been?” she says.

She is pragmatic, realizing that in the center of Newtown, hanging out at businesses is the only option after school. “What else is there?” she asks. “Parents feel relieved that their kids can go somewhere and they feel that they are safe. I think that parents simply don’t know the magnitude of kids that are in the center of town after school. They just know that their child is with a core group of kids that they trust.”

For years, says Mrs Sherlock, Newtown children have complained to her about the lack of a fun and safe place to hang out after school, but ultimately she concludes, the after-school problem is a parental supervision issue. “We have had half a dozen calls from parents as to the advisability of letting kids walk to businesses after school. We urge parents to have their children ride the bus home and then come back to the center of town with an adult, if they must. As a middle school kid you get more freedom, but 12- and 13-year-olds still need to be supervised,” says this educator. “It’s a mistake to think business owners can supervise your children.”