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Traffic around middle school is dangerous

Re: Trading safety for convenience, column by Diane Steinle, April 10.

I was very pleased to read your column. I am the president of the Plumb Oaks neighborhood, which borders Druid Road across from Oak Grove Middle School. Since mid January 2004, I have been aware of and monitoring the traffic problems you mentioned.

Many mornings and afternoons last year, I stood by the corner of Wellington Drive and Druid Road, watching and writing down license plate numbers of the cars that sped through the crosswalk, some almost hitting the crossing guard, one almost hitting a police officer.

I have taken pictures of the streets at 4:10 p.m., and you can see parked cars with doors open, children walking, children on bikes, children getting into cars, and school buses all passing each other in the street dangerously close.

I am happy that some officials are finally taking this situation seriously. I and other neighbors have repeatedly called many authorities in both the city of Clearwater and the Pinellas School District to get this corrected. Everyone cares, but no one did anything except post signs that were never enforced.

I saved an article from the Clearwater Times section of the St. Petersburg Times dated Dec. 21, 2003, where Jim Miller of the school district's Real Property Management department took it as a good sign that no one showed up at a meeting held to let us address concerns before the school opened. Mr. Miller never responded to my calls so I cannot speak for him, but I can tell him it was not a good sign. It was only a sign that our neighborhood was not informed of the meeting. I know I would have been there.

I have inquired about the latest meeting where concerns are being reviewed, but those meetings are only for officials, not people like me. I hope the officials have spent as much time as I have observing the problems so that we can truly fix them.

Side streets are not meant to be easy drop-off points for parents, buses

Re: Trading safety for convenience, column by Diane Steinle, April 10.

As a resident of Northwood Estates, my back yard faces the cul de sac at Leila Davis Elementary School. Each morning, parents park on Deer Run North, let their children out, and they walk over the green spaces, dragging/rolling their book bags, and go in the back way to school.

Several talks with the crossing guard (yes, there is a crossing guard there) convinced me that no one who drives their child up the back way wants to get in the line where they should be - that is, in front of the school.

This year, several high school buses go down Deer Run North and park there, along with about 11 or 12 automobiles so parents can deposit their students on buses at about 6:15 in the morning.

I called the transportation folks and was told twice to get the numbers of the buses - as if they could not chart which buses were now going down a side street.

Leila Davis has a perfectly respectable parking area where the buses could meet up with the parents, but no, someone in his or her infinite wisdom would rather see these cars, like stealth bombers, up side streets, where people are running in the morning or walking their dogs.

Transportation folks simply don't get it. The choice program has been a dismal mess, and the parents who drive their kids to meet with buses or drive them to walk up the back way to school simply are not sensitive to the privacy of neighborhoods. Period. End of civility.

[Last modified April 17, 2005, 00:25:16]