Walk through Midtown dangerous for teen girl

Dear Editor: Re “LETTER: Kingston schools should emphasize student safety over administrative comfort,” by Herb Lamb, Sept. 19, 2016: The writer recounts how his daughter is not allowed to ride the school bus from Linderman Avenue in Kingston because she is one-tenth of a mile too close to Kingston High School. To get to school, she has to walk through Midtown.

I recall a letter from a woman who had driven with her car windows up, doors locked, parked in the parking lot of Kingston Library, surrounded by a 12-foothigh chain-link fence, walked 20 feet into the building and suggested the library should be moved to a safer neighborhood.

In Syracuse, where I grew up, a similar, bigger neighborhood was referred to as “The Tenderloin.” My husband’s father and uncle had to go into that neighborhood for their work. After my uncle was attacked and nearly died, they had permits to carry guns. Thirty years ago, people did not carry guns.

I suggest several women, including the one who told Lamb her children had walked to school, park their cars on Washington Avenue at 7 o’clock on a cloudy day. They would each walk along on Henry, Cedar, Franklin and Van Buren streets to Broadway and back on a different street. This is the route used to determine the distance for the bus. Then picture a vulnerable 14-year-old girl walking there.

Why would we put our children at risk over being 500 feet too close to the school?

Martha Pearson, Kingston