School access is part of the problem |

Hundreds of thousands of NYC school children walk to and from school each day. These children have a fundamental right to a safe environment. Are we meeting our responsibility to provide it?

Make Queens Safer believes that access to school is a serious problem that schools need help to address. Many factors contribute to the difficulty of this problem:

Students must cross major roadways, and at many schools, not enough crossing guards are provided, or none are present at all.
Many parents drive their kids to school, resulting in double parking and congestion. Since curb space is rarely available, kids exit vehicles in traffic, putting themselves (and passing cyclists) at risk.
Elementary schools must safely and quickly release students individually to their parents or guardians. Many have very limited sidewalk space to work with, and post Sandy Hook, many are revisiting security protocols that affect student arrival and dismissal.

At a recent school rezoning forum, Make Queens Safer called for a clear plan to address these challenges at IS 230 in Jackson Heights, which must find ways to keep its students safe after a new annex opens in the fall. Already, conditions at arrival and dismissal times need improvement: students receive no assistance crossing busy Northern Boulevard, and some drivers passing the school on 34th Avenue are behaving erratically as they rush to pass slow traffic around the school. When the annex opens on an opposite corner of the intersection of 34th Avenue and 74th Street, the school will have to deal with arrivals and dismissals on both sides of the avenue, find ways to minimize the need for children to cross between the two buildings during the day, and ensure students’ safety if and when they do need to cross. Many other schools throughout the city face similarly difficult challenges keeping their kids safe.

Schools should not be left on their own to determine the best ways to manage traffic chaos on their perimeters or help students cross busy intersections blocks away. They need help. The city should provide experts to help schools and local precincts develop safety audits and plans. The Safe Routes to School program is a commendable start, but a more comprehensive approach is needed that reaches beyond DOT’s toolkit and includes close collaboration among NYPD, DOT, and DOE. NYPD has an especially important resource to bring to the table: it can deploy more of its Traffic Enforcement Agents on foot patrols to control traffic at schools during key arrival and dismissal hours. Crossing Guards should continue to focus on crosswalk safety, but supplemental patrols by trained and empowered agents are needed to keep traffic orderly at key intersections over a broader area.