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Schools

School access problems are gradually being solved

By RITA FARLOW
Published February 21, 2007

On a gray, chilly Thursday afternoon last week, eighth-grader Brittney Volpe stood in the parking lot of Seminole High School waiting for her parents.

Around her, dozens of other Seminole Middle School students milled about, also waiting to be picked up by parents inching up the side of the lot in a steady stream of cars and minivans.

"It's too crazy over there," said Volpe, 14, referring to the middle school car circle.

School district officials know there's a traffic problem at 131st Street N (Vonn Road) and 86th Avenue N.

The daily snarl was a recent subject of a monthly countywide meeting, designed to help cities, schools and the county collaborate on transportation safety issues that affect public schools.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization's School Transportation Safety Committee identified several issues in Seminole, where four public schools, including a vocational education center, are situated in close proximity. They include:

- Students walking through and parking in neighborhoods.

- A lack of sidewalks on 131st Street and 86th Avenue, where hundreds of students walk each day.

- Concern about accessibility for emergency vehicles due to the area's overall congestion.

Part of the problem is the facilities were built as neighborhood schools, before the implementation of the choice system bringing students into the schools from across the county, said Gina Harvey, a county planning section manager.

"Every parent drives their kids to school now, and it wasn't designed for that," Harvey said. "The car circle is so bad at the middle school that the parents are going to the high school to pick up their kids."

County Commissioner Susan Latvala, who chairs the committee, said the group has taken some steps to fix the issues. A new sidewalk was installed east of the middle school, and a new fence around the school deters students from cutting through the area.

Resolution of the major issue - a lack of sidewalks due to large drainage ditches- is in the works, Latvala said. "That's a very expensive one to fix," she said.

The plan is to construct culverts and lay sidewalks on top using Penny for Pinellas funds, Latvala said.

Diane Tyler of Seminole was one of the parents waiting at the high school Thursday to pick up her daughter, Alicia.

Tyler praised the addition a few years back of a left turn arrow that allows cars to turn onto 86th Avenue from 131st Street.

It's helped keep cars moving, she said. But the problem is far from fixed, she said.

"It's so congested. If the high school wasn't here, it would be horrible."

[Last modified February 21, 2007, 07:33:32]