School Too Big for Neighborhood

* Regarding “A Crusading Effect: Equestrian Neighborhood Residents Fight Church School’s Expansion,” on April 29: The church also benefited from the use of the park area created by the money and labor of Orange Park Acres. But that is not the point of the conflict. The community would have fought a large school coming to this area if they had had any idea that the church intended to grow to this size.

The school started as a preschool and now has grown far beyond a small neighborhood enterprise to a very large business. It will be larger than the local public elementary school if given the permission to add 171 students. Of the current 550-plus students, only 68 come from the Orange Park Acres area. Public schools have buses for distant students. All of these students will come in private cars.

Orange Park Acres is not just an area of large homes, as stated. It is a diverse area with small-, middle- and large-sized homes.

We have worked very hard to create and maintain a rural atmosphere that is equestrian in nature. A large business such as this school, with its attendant traffic, is not compatible with streets without sidewalks that share the right of way among cars, pedestrians and horses. The overflow parking will be a nightmare for the small homes on the two streets across Orange Park Boulevard from the school.

MARY ANN JONES

Orange