ANNUAL REPORT 2019 - Seattle

ANNUAL REPORT 2019

Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee

Email: stsc@ Website: 206-684-7583

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is this report & Why Does the Committee Exist?________________ 3 What does the Committee do? ______________________________________________ 3 When does it meet? _______________________________________________________ 3

2. The District Needs an Active Transportation Coordinator _____________ 4 3. Walk Boundaries _____________________________________________ 7 4. Crossing Guards _____________________________________________ 8

SDOT rates intersections for safety to determine guard placement __________________ 8 More personnel and support needed __________________________________________ 9 5. School Bus woes____________________________________________ 11 6. School Speed Zone Cameras __________________________________ 12 School Bus Paddle Fines __________________________________________________ 13 7. Construction & Renovation ____________________________________ 14 Seattle Public Schools are Constantly Rebuilding_______________________________ 14

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1. WHAT IS THIS REPORT & WHY DOES THE COMMITTEE EXIST?

The City of Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee was created by Ordinance 104344 in 1975 and codified in SMC 3.80 to bring together Seattle Public Schools, the City, and parents to improve safe routes to school. This board of 11 members includes representatives of Seattle Public Schools (SPS), Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), Seattle Police Department (SPD), King County Metro, and 5 volunteer positions filled by pedestrian advocates, bicycle advocates, parents, grandparents, and neighbors.

What does the Committee do?

The Committee was created to ensure working relationships between the different organizations that each have a piece of the puzzle, and to provide a mechanism for any community member to raise school traffic safety issues and get a response informed by that multi-agency coordination. The committee recommends new school crosswalk locations, crossing guard assignments, criteria for placement of crossing guards, and traffic circulation plans for new and renovated school buildings. It also reviews and responds to traffic concerns raised by parents and school staff, periodically updates elementary school walk boundary maps, works to improve crossing guard recruitment, and helps distribute information about transportation resources to parents and educators.

When does it meet?

Meetings are open to the public and are generally held 8:30 - 10:30 AM the fourth Friday of every month at the school district administrative building, John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence (2445 3rd Ave S).

This report to City Council is a summary of current status and needs for the different facets of school traffic safety in Seattle.

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2. THE DISTRICT NEEDS AN ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION COORDINATOR

It has become clear to the committee that more support is needed for students and families to walk and bike to school. In the Seattle Public School District, 60% of students are not qualified to receive busing. While SPS has staff who work heroically to ensure that buses arrive on time to transport bused students to school (see section 5 below), the significant majority of students in the walk zone get to school without organizational support.

Many parents and students feel that walking to school is not safe due to traffic, crime, and importantly the lack of other students also walking to school. This places a burden on families to transport their children via car which falls especially hard on low income families. At the same time, studies show that families driving kids to school increases air pollution around schools, adversely affecting the health of all students, and particularly those who suffer from respiratory conditions. Driving kids to school also increases traffic congestion around schools during rush hour, and makes streets less safe for pedestrians, which then increases the pressure to drive children to school, creating a vicious cycle.

By failing to support walking to school, SPS is missing an opportunity to ignite a culture around active transportation that encourages physical activity, reduces congestion and risk around schools, strengthens school communities, and improves truancy.

The Ask: The Committee strongly recommends that the Seattle Public School District hire an Active Transportation Coordinator focused on promoting multi-modal transportation such as walking, biking, and school pooling in a coordinated way throughout the district

Currently some schools with strong PTAs and internal support have been able to promote walking to school, but most schools simply don't have the capacity to elevate the opportunity of active transportation to their students. Even at schools who do have volunteer support to promote walking and biking, that support is often reliant on the planning and organizational skills of specific parents and is prone to falling apart as knowledgeable parents follow their kids to new schools.

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An Active Transportation Coordinator at the district level would be a move toward a more equitable and persistent transportation support system that would give every student an opportunity to get to school safely. In a city that is growing as fast as Seattle, it is critical that our understanding of human mobility shifts to prioritize sustainable and safe transportation options. The Seattle Public School District has an opportunity to acknowledge this need and influence the future of transportation in Seattle by hiring an Active Transportation Coordinator.

Increasing active transportation among SPS students would have multiple benefits. Walking and biking to school have been shown to increase students' ability to focus on school work, and to improve classroom performance. According to research by Niels

Egelund of Aarhus University in Denmark, "As a third-grade pupil, if you exercise and bike to school, your ability to concentrate increases to the equivalent of someone half a year further in their studies."1

Walking School Bus at Bailey Gatzert Elementary, from

Active Transportation also helps set the foundation for a lifetime of active commuting which has substantial lifetime health benefits including reductions in obesity and heart disease. Promoting active transportation and carpooling also helps reduce congestion around schools, which makes walking and biking safer in a self-reinforcing loop, while reducing pollution and greenhouse gases. And active transportation increases students' time spent outside, allowing them to make more robust connections to their neighborhoods and gain confidence in their abilities to navigate the world on their own.

One of the best ways to facilitate active transportation is to help parents form walking, biking, and carpooling groups. School privacy laws make collecting and disseminating data such as addresses cumbersome, and while this benefits students by protecting their data, it also means that fellow students attending the same school and living a block or two away from each other often have no idea

1 Found on 6/7/2018 at

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