Changing times

I now consider Noho my hometown although I grew up in Danbury. But I occassionally check out the Danbury newspaper and found this story on my old elementary school. The neighborhood has apparently changed quite drastically.

Of the school's 324 students, 152 are Hispanic or Latino, 28 are black, and 17 are Asian. About 65 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches and 57 percent come from homes where English is a second language.

When I went there, we had exactly three black kids from what passed for a ghetto then in the whole school and one Asian who was from an upscale family and definitely spoke English as a first language. In fact he was in my grade and the smartest kid in the class. Of course they didn't have free lunches then but I doubt that more than a dozen kids in the school would have qualified if they did.

It was a nice little school really and a safe and kid-friendly neighborhood. I've considered myself lucky to have grown up there. It's hard to imagine what it must be like today.