Parents urged to stay out of Senior Center parking lot at school pickup

Attention parents: If you’re dropping off or picking up your kids from school and using the Municipal Center parking lot, move around the corner and stay away from the Grafton Senior Center.

That is now the request of not only the seniors who are concerned about their safety, but also the word coming from Town Administrator Evan Brassard, Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings, and the Select Board.

“We’re taking a middle of the road approach,” Brassard told the Select Board Tuesday night.

As more elderly residents return to the Senior Center after two years of diminished programming due to COVID-19, parents and seniors have been battling for parking spaces. A letter sent to Brassard, Cummings, and the Select Board, shared on Grafton Common Monday, is hopefully resolving the problem.

Parent pickup and drop-off at Grafton High School and Grafton Middle School parking lot is a crowded time, with cars backed up along Providence Road. To avoid the crowd, some parents have had their children meet them after school just up the hill at the Municipal Center lot.

This has led to hazardous conditions for both seniors and children in the parking lot and rudeness from parents who refuse to leave spots at the Senior Center, the letter said.

Brassard said he met with Cummings and came to a solution: parents will now be required to pull around the building while waiting for their students after school, leaving the Senior Center spaces in the rear of the Municipal Center free.

Brassard said Cummings and principals will communicate the change to parents, since he’s loathe to add more signs to the parking lot.

“We have sign clutter as it is,” he said,

“And it’s ignored,” agreed Select Board member Doreen Defazio.

“This has to do more with parents than the school department… I’m going to side with seniors on this issue all day long,” she added. “I do not want, particularly after years of the pandemic, for seniors to feel they are not welcome.”

Richard Whitney, who is running for Select Board, said he spoke to seniors about the issue at the Senior Center.

“It’s a safety problem and it needs to be enforced before someone gets hurt,” he said.

Brassard said there is a lot of congestion in the parking lot, particularly when the Senior Center is offering programs in the afternoons.”

“We get it. We really don’t want to exclude either group,” he said. “We’re trying to satisfy everyone. That doesn’t always happen in government, but we’ll see how it goes.”

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