Highland Elementary School held a meeting on Tuesday night. Staff and others came together and discussed their thoughts and concerns to help find ways to improve the Safe Routes to School ideas.
Recently, Highland Elementary School received a grant from Grand Forks Safe Kids to pay for a study to be completed this year that identifies areas of concern and recommendations for providing safer routes to school for students who walk, ride bikes, or skateboard.
Officer and parent to a Highland elementary school student, Kyle Olson, shared his concerns regarding his child’s safety when walking to school.
“I know when picking up my kid or walking her to or from school, we have to take the busy county road if we don’t cut through the trees,” said Olson, “There’s no sidewalks or anything, and you end up walking in the road lane. You almost must walk in the steep ditch so you don’t get hit by a car.” Like others, Olson believes a priority of the improvements is to install more lighting on the roads that lead up to Highland School.
Transportation Planner of the Northwest Regional Development Commission, Tim Finseth, gathered information from those who attended the meeting. “We are in charge of facilitating this grant process with the community,” said Finseth, “To make sure we keep the ball rolling and keep everybody on the correct timelines.”
Finseth got ideas and possible solutions for safer routes to school from staff that attended. His goal is to implement these plans within the timelines of the grant. Community members of Crookston will decide every improvement and, eventually, the city. “This is not going to be my plan; this is a community plan,” said Finseth, “I want the community to make this plan, not me, so when it gets done, it does exactly what the community needs.”
During the meeting, it was determined each parent of Highland School will be sent a digital survey to gather input on what other improvements need to be made to ensure safer routes for children. This survey is scheduled to be sent out within the next two weeks.
The meeting also included a discussion of a visual audit. The visual audit will consist of interested community members and staff to oversee the streets near Highland School and gather data on route safety. “We’re going to walk where students walk, we’re going to bike where people bike, we’re going to drive where people drive,” said Finseth. “We’re going to make sure that we fully understand everything that is happening every morning and every afternoon around the school.” The audit will be one of the final steps before scheduling the improvement of the safer routes plan.
There is no set date for the next meeting. However, those in attendance unanimously agreed that there would be another meeting at the Highland Elementary School auditorium within the next two weeks.
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