Upper West Side Streets Renaissance

Friday, February 15^th, West End Avenue @ 81^st Street: The brisk winter morning air was no match for the third grade students of The Calhoun School as they unveiled their new “No Idling” sign to a packed crowd of parents, teachers, and community members. 

The permanent sign, mounted to the school’s street-side fence, was the culmination of the students’ crusade to educate parents, bus drivers, delivery truck drivers and neighbors that idling engines contribute to air pollution.  Before today’s event, the students had conducted an innovative, highly scientific air quality experiment to help them better understand how pollution exists in the air they breathe. The third graders posted index cards smeared with Vaseline throughout the school and outside on the street. The results were so dramatic, with the outsides samples having turned dark from soot, that the students knew they couldn’t stop there—drivers in the area needed to know that idling engines were significantly degrading the air quality. Armed with their information, the students wrote letters to their Head of School, the Mayor’s Office, and community leaders, and the new sign was on its way to becoming a reality.

The students’ efforts certainly paid off! At this morning’s ceremony a representative from the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability was on hand to formally congratulate all the students and school in their environmental work. (Of course, the UWS Streets Renaissance team was represented as well.) The morning ended with the students singing the classic Joni Mitchell song “They paved paradise and put up a parkin’ lot.”