Businesses cringe at early dismissal

Almost every Wednesday, Susan Hawley watches the clientele of her restaurant change on 17th Street. The crowd grows larger, younger and louder — and sometimes drives away regular customers, who make it a point to return on a different day of the week.

Hawley, the manager of Ruby’s Diner, serves lunch Wednesdays to dozens of students from Ensign Intermediate School, who get out at 12:40 p.m. and head downtown for their midday meal. Some days, she’s ordered the kids to leave because of their profane language. Other times, she’s waited while they called their parents to help pay for a check they couldn’t cover. It’s a difficult day of the week for Hawley, but it can also be a profitable one.

“I don’t want to turn them away,” she said. “They do bring us business.”

Ruby’s is among a number of restaurants on 17th Street — along with Pasta Bravo, Pick Up Stix and other locations in the Westcliff Plaza — that turn into middle school hangouts early Wednesday afternoons. While teachers let classes out early to make time for planning, students roam freely around the local shopping centers — to the chagrin of some parents, who have called for an end to the early-out Wednesdays. This month, Principal Ed Wong said, teachers would likely vote on whether to uphold the practice in the fall.

Retailers have complained about students talking loudly, messing with condiment bottles, even getting into fights. In response, the PTA has sent e-mails home asking that students clear out of the Westcliff Plaza restaurants by 2:30 p.m. — a move that, Wong said, has resulted in fewer calls from business owners. Most Ensign students, he believes, are not troublemakers.

“I think we have a few kids who don’t like to follow rules, but 99% of our kids are great kids and do what we expect them to do,” Wong said.

Teacher Paula Gibbons, the teachers union representative for Ensign, said her colleagues had mixed feelings about the early dismissal. The extra planning time on Wednesday, she said, has had a positive impact on test scores.

“Our API [Academic Performance Index] scores are going up, so we don’t want to really change something if it’s working,” Gibbons said. “But we are sympathetic to the community.”

Some parents have no problem with the early-out Wednesdays. Klavdia Steffel said she appreciated the school giving her sons a break midway through the week and added that they had never been in trouble.

“My boys are in honors classes and they have homework every day,” Steffel said. “So when early-out comes along, it’s nice in the middle of the week to give them a little extra time to get things done.”

Moreover, a number of students said they did mind their manners during lunch — and that they often get blamed for the actions of their peers.

“They make us leave even if we do nothing,” said seventh-grader Geneva Walters, 13.