Sure, denizens of Baristaville might covet their pool, but Maplewood can keep its library. From the New York Times...
Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly.Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day.
As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.
Library employees will still be on the job, working at tasks like paperwork, filing, and answering calls and online questions.
“They almost knocked me down, and they run in and out,†said Lila Silverman, a Maplewood resident who takes her grandchildren to the library’s children’s room but called the front of the library “a disaster area†after school. “I do try to avoid those hours.â€
This comfortable Essex County suburb of 23,000 residents, still proud of its 2002 mention in Money magazine on a list of “Best Places to Live,†is no seedy outpost of urban violence. But its library officials, like many across the country, have grown frustrated by middle schoolers’ mix of pent-up energy, hormones and nascent independence.
Outside the library, students who use it gave the new hours two thumbs down, way down.
“Kids will get into real mischievous activities†with the library closed, warned one teenager, Jonathan Brock, a student at the district’s alternative high school program.
Is that a threat? Maybe Maplewood needs a babysitter cop on a bike like the one who watches the Baristaville middle schoolers whose after-school enrichment programs involve congregating and tossing the football outside Upper Montclair's Cold Cash Creamery.
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stupid moron parents are to blame for their rotten kids