Hardy School makes moves to keep rolling balls off busy Weston Road

Although Wellesley’s new Hardy Elementary School has been open for just a little over a year, it’s already time for a tweak. Ever hear the adage, “Where there’s a rolling ball, there’s a running child”? So has the school’s principal Grant Smith, who voiced his concerns about how errant balls have sailed over the 4-ft. high chain link fence separating the playing field from busy Weston Road. Brown, along with assistant Town engineer George Saraceno, appeared before Wellesley’s Design Review Board on Oct. 8, seeking approval to add five feet of netting to the existing fence.

You know how when stuff happens, people sometimes ask in despair, “How did we get here?”

Nobody asked that at the Design Review Board meeting. The 5-member Board saw this one coming a mile away. “We knew this was going to come up,” chair Juann Khoory said, recalling that the Board raised exactly the question of balls escaping from the playing field to busy Weston Road during the Hardy School planning process.

Saraceno laid out the specifics of the ask: to add 200 feet of netting along Weston Road; 40 feet of netting along Hardy Road; and 40 feet of netting along the parking lot. The overall height would come in at 9 feet. Saraceno compared it visually to the netting at Sprague School, albeit on a smaller scale—at Sprague, the netting height is 20 feet because kids up to high school age play there.

The Board unanimously approved the addition of the netting, without even a, “We told ya so.”

“Good luck with the fence. The project looks amazing. We love it,” Khoory said.

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