Improving the safety of pedestrians in front of Lakeview Middle School is an issue being tackled, Warsaw Police Dept. Lt. Kip Shuter told the City of Warsaw Traffic Commission Wednesday.
“We’ve been working on that for months and months and months,” Shuter said. “It’s dark in front of there. Not so much now with the time change Sunday, but previous to that, and when time changes again it’ll be back to being dark again in front of the school.”
Students start arriving at Lakeview around 7 a.m. and leaving by about 2:45 p.m.
NIPSCO has been out there several times adding lights, he reported, and the school has added lights to the front of the building pointing out toward the the road. NIPSCO placed lights on the north side of Smith Street to light it up, but it’s still “really dark,” Shuter said.
Last week and this week, the street department improved the crosswalks to be more high-visibility with reflective markings instead of just plain white stripes on each side of the crosswalk. Shuter said the street department also was looking into getting quotes for “yellow flashing lighting in the approach on each end of that school zone to help slow traffic down there also.”
He said he hears from the DARE and school resource officers every day that there are near misses in front of the school where kids are crossing the road but cars don’t slow down and sometimes don’t even try to slow down at the crosswalks.
Shuter said Warsaw Community Schools Director of Buildings and Grounds Dirk Felger is working with them to try and find funding for the yellow flashing lights.
“Lights are good, and I don’t think they’re a bad thing. They’re very expensive, and there’s maintenance with them. One of your best and most safest thing to do is have a crossing guard,” Warsaw Superintendent of Public Works Jeff Beeler said. “Someone there physically, lit up, to control the intersection, control the kids. When you have those people, hurrying to work in the morning, not paying attention to lights, they can do whatever means necessary to try and get the attention of the vehicle, or at least stop the kids. So I think that needs to be an option, an alternative to the lights.”
Shuter said Lakeview does have a member of its custodial staff serving as a crossing guard in the afternoon but not in the morning. Even then, those are junior high kids who don’t always cross streets at the crosswalk, Warsaw Police Dept. Chief Scott Whitaker said.
Shuter said he brought up the idea of a crossing guard before, but “I believe the issue was the time it takes in the morning compared to one short time of 10 minutes in the afternoon compared to a half hour, 45 minutes in the morning. They can’t sacrifice those employees for that amount of time to do that.”
Whitaker mentioned that at Jefferson Elementary in Winona Lake, someone wheels out a stop sign for the middle of the crosswalk to remind drivers to stop for pedestrians. However, Whitaker was reminded that there’s a stop there, too, as it is a four-way stop.
Felger told the Commission that students are crossing at several intersections along Smith Street. “They’re just going to walk up and cross (the street),” he said.
Shuter said there also was an issue with parents “not following the rules” of going through the vehicle line and dropping their kids off at school, but instead dropping their kids off a block away from the school and letting them walk to it.
Whitaker said a police squad car typically is there at the school every morning, but it doesn’t necessarily stop the traffic or slow it down.
“They’re probably still doing 10 (mph) over,” he said.
(Story By The Times Union)
