Plans call for afternoon buses to use emergency exit from Peters Township school
To help minimize the number of students traveling on buses to start the new academic year, Peters Township School District officials have asked that parents consider transporting their children.
The request has generated a good response, which aids in efforts to maintain proper social distancing on buses to safeguard against COVID-19. In turn, though, vehicular traffic is likely to increase substantially at schools during drop-off and pickup times.
A particular problem area in that regard is McMurray Elementary School, which has vehicular access to and from often-congested East McMurray Road.
In an effort to alleviate further congestion on weekday afternoons, Peters Township Council on July 27 approved the use of what normally is an emergency-only exit to the east of the school, onto Meadowbrook Circle, for 10 buses. A gate at the exit will be opened briefly and then closed, with only buses allowed to pass.
Residents of the adjoining neighborhood generally are not in favor of the plan, as a petition opposing it bearing 122 signatures was presented to Peters Township School Board at its Aug. 17 meeting. Similar proposals in the past, most recently in 2009, elicited the same type of reaction.
“For those of you who may not be intimately familiar with our neighborhood, our streets are narrower than those in other neighborhoods, and it is a one-way-in, one-way-out neighborhood,” Ridgeview Drive resident Samantha McVicker told the board.
The only regular vehicular access point for homes on the neighborhood’s streets, also including Highvue Drive, is Orchard Hilands Drive’s intersection with Bebout Road.
McVicker said students who live in the neighborhood walk to and from both McMurray Elementary and Peters Township Middle schools. Students in kindergarten through third grade attend Bower Hill Elementary School and are bused.
“Because we do have such narrow roads, the buses are not allowed in our neighborhood to drop off our children. Our children are dropped off at Bebout, and parents often pick their children up there, either in car or on foot, at the same entrance-exit point,” McVicker said. “I understand that we obviously are in a different set of circumstances, and I consider myself to be a team player. But I think our kids deserve to have as much safety as everyone else.”
Superintendent Jeannine French said other possibilities for handling McMurray Elementary traffic were discussed, including potential uses of the emergency exit.
“We looked at, do we want to put parent traffic back there?” she said. “That did not seem like a viable option.”
One safety measure to be implemented is that students who walk to and from McMurray will be dismissed from school 15 minutes early, giving them time to return home before the buses leave the premises.
“It won’t be an issue for the middle school children,” French said. “They’re let out much earlier.”
For families opting to transport students, the superintendent acknowledged the challenges they face.
“Parents are picking up and dropping off children at multiple schools. So a lot of our parents are saying, ‘I can drive my child, but I need a little bit of dispensation because I have to go to different schools to pick up and drop off.’ And we want that,” French said.
“The reality is, under this current situation, we had to allow for some options for parents to come in earlier if they can do drop-in. We’ve changed our schedule so they’re doing that,” she continued. “We are allowing parents to pick up their children a little earlier so that we can make this whole thing work, that we can get lower numbers on our buses so that our children are able to come to school.”