Highland Elementary School is partnering with Safe Kids Grand Forks and Crookston Public Works Department to use a $16,000 Safe Routes to School Grant awarded by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to help make the streets around the school safer.
Safe Kids Grand Forks helped Highland write the proposal for the grant after the school received multiple complaints about traffic not stopping for kids at the Barrette Street and North Central Avenue intersection and with the addition of preschool and kindergarten students coming to the school in 2024.
“With the addition coming a year from about this time, taking on Pre-K and K, and being a 1-5 grade building, with the students getting younger, you need to be safer because those kids are going to lack the ability to keep an eye on traffic and double-checking all those other things,” Highland Principal Chris Trostad explained. “I know Public Works Director Brandon Carlson is also working on some things, and one of the big issues is that intersection isn’t very well-lit. We even struggle during certain times of the year when it’s really dark in the mornings, like during the time changes. Even where the parents drop the kids off, it is extremely dark. That is going to be one advantage with the new addition, that’s going to be well-lit along there, but our biggest concern is the kids over here at this intersection. A couple of times a year, I get complaints that cars aren’t stopping for the kids, and the kids are standing there. There have probably been some close calls over the years because it’s so dark that they don’t see the kids.”
Another point of concern the city is looking to address is Barrette Street, as traffic comes from the houses, apartments, and new additions, and many students are walking down the route in the dark at certain times of the year.
With the grant, Safe Kids and Highland plan to have the Safe Routes to School program bring in experts that work specifically in making areas around school safer for children to travel and work in conjunction with the Crookston Public Works Department to make them happen. The grant will be used to cover engineering, enforcement, and equity needs for student safety on the roads by Highland School.
“Safe Kids Grand Forks’ participation in this is helping Highland secure that funding, and we’ll also be highly involved in the planning. Our focus is making sure that the streets around our school are safer here. We already do a lot of education, and encouragement activities with Highland,” Safe Kids Grand Forks Specialist Tina Sanders explained. “Safe Routes to School had awarded us a Boost Grant to Highland and Crookston to do some activities and education with the students, so they already trusted us to do some activities with them, to begin with. Now we have this planning grant, which will cover some engineering, equity, and enforcement needs in this area to make it safer for kids to walk and bicycle to school, have parents drop them off, and use our buses.”
Some of the changes that could be made include re-routing traffic or adding new road signals and street lighting.
The committee for the study is scheduled to begin meeting in late spring/early summer, but Safe Kids is already helping teach kids about traffic and pedestrian safety to keep them safe and have even worked with the school at the Barrette and North Central intersection with bus safety and other pedestrian safety training.
“Safe Kids is already in action out here, and we’re partnering with Highland. We just had our Winter Walk to School Day, which is a huge event for students, encouraging them to get out and walk, and we enjoy that because we have the opportunity to talk to kids about being good and safe pedestrians,” said Sanders. “We plan to have our Bike to School Day event in May, and before that, we get to come out for our Safety on Wheels and safety with bike helmets. Even though the grant activities aren’t going to start for a while, we’re already partnering and doing some things for safety to ensure that kids are safe on their way to and from school.”
Highland plans to continue partnering with Safe Kids Grand Forks for safety seminars and training to teach students to be safe on their way to school.
