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LEHI — City officials are planning to add a crossing guard to an intersection by an elementary school shortly after video shot by neighboring parents showed struggles young students were having crossing the street.
The video was posted on Friday by a Lehi resident to a Facebook page dedicated to city happenings. In the video, some close calls are seen. Some drivers pass through the school crosswalk while children are inside it.
Lehi resident and parent Cindy Olenslager said the video highlighted a problem she said she had been complaining about for months.
“My daughter who walks to the school bus for the junior high … and I’ve seen her almost getting hit twice — by a car that stops and another car that goes around because they don’t think why the car is stopping,” she said. “Every day, I’m like, ‘This is a war zone for these kids that are walking.’”
The crosswalk in question is located at the intersection of 2875 North and 300 West — just north of Eaglecrest Elementary School. It’s located in a residential area and also just a few blocks away from Skyridge High School, which opened in September to help the city’s population boost over the past several years.
Eaglecrest Elementary School principal Rex Becker didn’t disagree with complaints he has heard about the crosswalk, and actively pushed for more safety.
“It’s scary at times,” he said. “Nobody has been hit or anything, but I’m out there doing traffic with my kids and (drivers) will speed by at times. I just shake my head and yell at them to slow down. It’s — I don’t want to wait until something happens and then do something.”
While the video caught the attention of parents and city residents by surprise and led to some complaints, Wade Allred, streets superintendent in Lehi City’s public works department, said the city was already studying the crosswalk to see if it needed a crossing guard.
That study is a normal procedure conducted anytime changes in population might swing traffic statistics near schools, Allred said.
It concluded that a crossing guard would help children safely cross the street. Before then, it was a possibility to add a crossing guard there, but safety resources — the guards are assigned by the Lehi Police Department — are limited and distributed to the heaviest traffic areas first.
“Now with the growth and the more kids that have moved into the neighborhood, it changes the demographics where the numbers have reached kind of a tipping point to where now the presence of an adult is necessary there,” he said. “Up until those numbers were reached, it was just an option.”
Allred said with just a week and a half left in the school year, he’s asking drivers to pay attention and drive more safely at the crosswalk. New signs will then be added in June, allowing drivers time to adjust to changes on the road. The crossing guard will be added next school year.
“It’s scary at times. ... It’s — I don’t want to wait until something happens and then do something.” - Eaglecrest Elementary School principal Rex Becker
Much of the rise in traffic has been through rising developments in the area. The newly-built Skyridge High School is also in the area, which has added to the vehicle traffic. Allred said traffic on 2875 North increased slightly by 10 percent after the high school opened.
Becker said Eaglecrest runs on a double-session system. Classes start at 8 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. and end at 2:15 p.m. Meanwhile, Skyridge classes begin at 7:45 a.m. and end at 2:15 p.m.
“When our kids are walking to school, high school kids are coming in and parents dropping off freshmen and stuff,” Becker. “Then when children get out at 2:15, that’s when the high schoolers get out too. This particular crossing — the street is right through a neighborhood and a lot of the high schoolers like to come through that neighborhood and get on the street my school is located on because the other street is pretty backed up.”
However, the high school children aren’t the only offenders, which those involved found troubling. Parents were caught on video with some of the close calls.
“I think they’re not thinking about it. I think they’re thinking about their own little world of getting their kids to and from school that if they ever stopped to think about (other children walking),” Olenslager said, pausing for a moment. “And I have to say a lot of these parents are on their cellphones.”
Allred noticed it too.
“From what we’ve seen, it’s not the high school that has caused the problem, it’s parents that aren’t paying attention,” he said. “Of course, everyone says ‘Oh, they’re texting’ — I can’t prove that and I don’t know that for a fact. But it just seems to be a lot of people in a hurry to go nowhere.”
Bringing the issue to the city was the last hurdle that needed to be cleared in adding safety to the crosswalk.
Olenslager said she and other parents were unsure how to address the situation, leading to the video. The video posted garnered more than 4,000 views on Facebook.
Though the crosswalk will get the extra safety residents were hoping for, Allred said the easiest way to reach the government isn’t through indirect social media pages, it’s through a more direct line of contact. He said emails or calls to correct officials or posts to government pages are more effective.
As for the new crossing guard, Becker said he’s thrilled for what that will mean for school safety.
“That’s our number one concern,” he said. “Everybody involved would be terribly hurt if some child got hit by a car or something like that. I don’t know — it’s the unthinkable.”
