Site Selection

HARVARD last week offered to lend the City a field at the Business School for construction of portable classrooms to house the children of the Houghton School until their new school is constructed. If the University's offer is accepted by the City, it would be a step toward solving what has become an agonizing problem for the parents, teachers, and children of the Houghton School.

For over a year, the Houghton PTA fought to convince the School Committee to build portable classrooms for the pupils, rather than scattering them among other Cambridge Schools. The School Committee last month reversed its earlier position in favor of scatteration, and voted to construct the classrooms--if a suitable location could be found.

Finding such a site has not been easy. Ideally, it should be close to the Houghton neighborhood, to avoid the bussing of children to school, and yet should cause a minimum of inconvenience to persons living near the classrooms. Both the B- School field and a DeWolfe St. Site owned by Harvard and the Archdiocese of Boston appear to meet these criteria. The Houghton PTA has unofficially welcomed the proposed locations.

Yet die-hard School Committeemen such as James Fitzgerald, who oppose the portable classrooms per se, may attempt to block approval of these sites. The School Committee should ignore them, and accept Harvard's offer. If there is to be a final round in the portable classrooms fight, it should be fought in the open, when the City debates the appropriation for the classrooms. The quibble over site selection is now pointlessly delaying the construction of the new Houghton School.