Solon High School administration and the Board of Education have created a new plan to ensure safety in the Pool Pad parking lot. While students were enjoying their summer, SHS principals and board directors were discussing ways to allow students to safely walk to their cars and leave the school at a quicker rate than in previous years.
To combat safety concerns, Principal Erin Short and Director of Transportation Lisa Shirkey outlined a plan to terminate the fear of an accident in the afternoon when students are dismissed.
“We have been very lucky that no students have been hurt, like hit by cars and significantly injured in that parking lot,” Short said. “The design of the parking lot is not great. It’s not ideal. It has been an ongoing concern about what we do to change things. We had a meeting in July, but I would say even before that Mrs. Shirkey and I started talking about what kind of changes we could make.”
In the 2023-2024 school year, a majority of students and parents would fill the parking lot as soon as the 2:55 p.m. bell rang to dismiss students. After examining the parking lot and the layout of buses and students, the administration felt the need to revamp protocol to ensure students aren’t in jeopardy when exiting the parking lot and the building.
“It’s a change to the traffic pattern and that has to do with the safety of everybody,” Shirkey said. “We made a crosswalk so there is one area [where] the students are supposed to walk from the pool pad to their vehicles.”
Shirkey said that the bulk of the issue mainly had to do with exiting the parking lot and not the building.
“The second change which was more significant has to do with traffic flow pattern,” Shirkey said. “We wanted to keep student traffic separate from the bus traffic. In past years, everybody was driving through the pool pad. It really was a safety concern. So, we established a traffic pattern so that all of the student traffic needs to go to the south end of the parking lot and then use the last two [lanes] which would be the lanes that are [the] most to the west. The way that they [students] come into the lot to get out onto Inwood are actually in front of the buses rather than behind the buses which is really important.”
At the end of the school day, students tend to be more eager to leave the building than arrive. Shirkey said this is another concern of endangerment due to the amount of students leaving via personal vehicle or on the bus.
“These changes are all only for the afternoon,” Shirkey said. “The morning remains the same because the mornings are not an issue– our buses get there earlier before the student traffic does for the most part, so we wanted to bring attention to it [the afternoon dismisal] so that everybody was aware.”
In the previous school year, students were inconvenienced by waiting in heavy traffic tending to slowly inch their way out of the school.
“It takes me about ten minutes [to leave the school] depending on how many people are getting out or what time I leave the building,” senior Diamond Gray said. “Last year it took quite a while –not going to lie. It took maybe fifteen minutes to get out, but it’s kind of faster this year.”
While the administration is reflecting on ways to increase safety for everyone utilizing the pool pad, students have fabricated ideas of their own accord.
“Probably a longer crosswalk and not the short one, or at least a way people can see where the cars are coming, you know where you’re walking down,” Gray said.
Short acknowledges that while these changes may not be ideal, she is pleased with how students and parents are adherent to the alterations without complaint.
“I believe the changes we have made to the pool lot have been very helpful,” Short said. “I am so proud of our student body [and] that they have been amazing thus far. Our parents have done a good job with following the rules and not going over there to pick up their kids, and I think the addition of the security has really helped.”
