Parry Sounds ~ Ideas and Opinions, In and Around Parry Sound

There is good news for Parry Sound with the announcement of the decision to build the new elementary school on an eight acre property on Beatty Street, a couple of hundred meters north of Isabella Street. I picked up on this Monday with the posting of the announcement at the CottageCountryNow.ca website.

There are two upsides to the selection of this location. It’s a reasonably low traffic area for children who walk, although there will need to be attention paid to traffic on Isabella. Site lines are rather poor and with a downhill slope there is a tendency to speed. But that should not be too big an issue with education of local drivers and some gentle enforcement of speed limits.

The big win is with respect to train and transportation noise. Unline the current location of the Victory and William Beatty schools, the new school will be far from any rail noise, notably the air horns and the squealing of rail car wheels. The location is also far enough away from the 400 that vehicle traffic noise will not be an issue.

I suspect that a very few years after the new school is operational we will see above average reading and mathematics scores for the students. A quiet learning environment has been shown to be an important contributor to academic success.

This is another one of those ‘green shoots’ of growth and good decisions that will make Parry Sound and even better place to live.