Its awkward name notwithstanding (it’s an homage to the Fish Bowl frequented by the high school seniors), the Minnow Cup drop-in center for Bromfield middle school students is an idea worth trying. Opening for business on Monday, the converted IT space will host activities like pool and pingpong and whatever else coordinator Sharon Correnty and her student advisors come up with. Kids can do their homework and socialize after school in a supervised environment.

Interim Superintendent Joseph Connelly, Principal James O’Shea, and Correnty did superb work planning and getting the center quickly off the ground.

We hope it will help to lessen the flood of students that overwhelms the public library each afternoon. Though the library staff and volunteers have done their best to monitor the influx of middle schoolers every day, we’re sure they, and the library’s non-student patrons, are happy there’s now an alternative after-school hangout.

At $50, membership in the Minnow Cup is a bargain. We encourage parents of middle schoolers to sign them up. Not only will the drop-in center be a safe and fun place to go after school, it will be a community-building exercise to which students can fully contribute, perhaps for the first time in their lives.