At the start of the 2018-2019 school year, CHS administrators changed the morning drop off and afternoon pick up rules for students and parents in hopes of lightening the heavy traffic.

Last year, major issues included parents dropping students off on the side of Gainsborough Road or going into side streets to try to avoid traffic. This year, CHS administration cracked down. Now, the stadium lot is open for parents to drop off their students, and students can no longer use the regular crosswalk at the stadium on Gainsborough. Students must walk all the way down past the stadium and back up towards the school following the sidewalk.

“It makes it a little bit quicker because we’re getting more cars in,” School Resource Officer Amy Homrock said.

According to an email from Principal Heckert, there are new lines painted on Victory Lane and the drop off loop to help with traffic. Also, at the intersection of Victory Lane and Gainsborough Road, there are designated right and left turn lanes. In the Victory Lane drop off loop, there is a large white crosswalk to help students safely cross from the lot to school.

This initiative makes the drop off process faster and safer by creating more areas for parents to drop off their students.

While there have been improvements with the traffic flow and parents obeying the new rules, there is still a constant backup in the mornings on both Gainsborough and the Victory drop off loop.

“Unfortunately, we only have so much land here to use,”  Homrock said. “We don’t want to take away parking spots to reconfigure the parking lot.”  

The main issue from both backups is the same: time. Parents would drop their students off on the side of the road when the line takes too long, which as a result, causes the rest of the cars to stop behind them. The brief 10-20 second stop adds up when many other parents do it as well.

“Parents are getting impatient, and they’re just telling their kids to get out of the car in the middle of the road, while they are waiting to get into the drop off, which is not what we want to happen,” said Homrock.

The new rules are an improvement from last year but there is still resistance towards them, for the same reasons as last year. Parents are doing the exact same thing by choosing to drop their students off on side streets and the side of the road, which is very dangerous and causes traffic.

According to Homrock, students should try to arrive at school earlier, around 7:20-7:25 a.m., when the traffic is much lighter. This would help to create an even distribution of cars in the morning instead of the majority of students trying to get into one small area at the same time.

Another new addition to the afternoon rules pertains to buses for students with disabilities and special needs and where these buses are located. Since Oct. 1, the majority of the special education buses pick students up in the Victory Lane traffic loop. Officer Homrock stands outside and directs the buses out of the loop. However, this impacts parents trying to pick up and students trying to get out.

“I have personally timed the bus departure, and all of the special education buses should be out of the Victory Lane lot by 2:40 p.m.” said Heckert in her email. “Accordingly, parents will not be able to enter the Victory Lane lot until after 2:35 p.m. in the afternoon.”

The goal of changing the bus location was to decongest the main bus loop in the front of the school. The high number of buses in the loop each day after school lets out creates an unsafe situation for students trying to leave.

“We are going to be putting in more crosswalks to make it safer for the kids to cross,” Homrock said.