WEST CHESTER, Ohio — In the wake of a series of traffic crashes involving students walking to and from school, including one that killed a Lakota East Freshman student, school district officials joined other local representatives to answer pressing questions from the public.
A group of family members of recent victims sat in the front row hoping their loved ones would take center stage.
Christina Alcorn came to the meeting to represent her son Aspen Runnels, who was hit and killed in May.
"I don't want any part of my community to ever sit in the room that I sat in for 10 days while we waited on Aspen to figure out if he was going to live, if he was going to die, what his life was going to look like, and no one should have to sit in a room like that," Alcorn said.
Trisha Parnell's daughter was hit by a car near Lakota West High in 2018 and joined Alcorn in the front row. She said the discussion was productive but felt like it came after too much harm had already been done.
"It felt positive, but it feels slow," Parnell said.
Lakota Superintendent Dr. Ashley Whitely opened the meeting with an update on several things that have been done since she took office in July.
Whitely said they've already extended the crosswalk at Lakota East and done a traffic study with the goal of reducing speed outside the campus where Runnels was killed. As for Lakota West, the superintendent said they've added lights around the campus to improve the visibility of warning signs and considered more than a half dozen proposals to enhance safety in the area.
Seth Hagaman with West Chester police addressed crowd questions about the potential of using school resource officers to direct traffic and monitor crossings, and he said it wasn't a feasible solution to traffic control.
Hagaman said the officers have duties within the school to address during those periods.
County Traffic Engineer Matt Loeffler addressed a long list of potential infrastructure upgrades near schools and whether they would or would not be legitimate solutions to help protect children.
Loeffler said they're already planning to add yield lines ahead of existing crosswalks. In-pavement lighting had been proposed to the engineer's office, but Loeffler called them "maintenance nightmares" that wouldn't be reasonable additions.
Speed humps or speed cushion additions were a popular proposal by folks in the crowd, but Loeffler effectively wrote that option off.
He said, by statute, speed humps or cushions weren't permitted on roadways with a speed limit over 30 miles per hour, and all of the pertinent streets were over that limit.
When it came to lowering the speed limits, the engineer said that was up to ODOT as they, by statute, set speed limits based on recommendations from traffic studies.
Loeffler said they've done several of those studies, and the only speed limit that qualified for a reduction from 40 to 35 mph was a section of West Chester Road between Eagle View Drive and Beckett Road.
He called roundabouts and pedestrian bridges possibilities in some areas based on where they would fit, but it wasn't necessarily reasonable because both options were expensive.
Rumble strips, the grooved pavement that makes a loud noise to alert drivers, took a good portion of Loeffler's time as he attempted to explain why they weren't a likely solution for roads like Bethany Road outside of Lakota East Freshman.
"They can be quite the annoyance of sound for the residents or businesses that are close to them," he said.
Loeffler said the townships would need to get approval from everyone living or working nearby before they could install the strips.
Officer Hagaman pointed out the complex nature of many proposals.
"As you can see, from different disciplines different issues arise, and there's no one solution that seems to arise," Hagaman said. "If there was, I think we would have done it."
Both Alcorn and Parnell said they hoped the joint meeting would lead to meaningful change in the school district, but they haven't been waiting for the district to solve everything.
They've been circulating a petition for the passage of Aspen's law which would make hitting someone in a school zone a felony offense, and make penalties for traffic infractions doubled similar to rules in construction zones.
Parnell plans to ramp up efforts for the law's passage during the coming legislative session.
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