Parents to Get Lesson in School Etiquette

It’s early in the morning as Officer Clark Baker stands across the street from Woodlake Elementary School. It doesn’t take long for the action to begin.

A woman leaves her light-blue Mercedes running as she grabs the hand of a little boy and dashes across the street without looking. A truck slams on its brakes in time to avoid the pair.

Later, chaos ensues as dozens of parents converge on Chandler Elementary School in Van Nuys. While they wait to pick up their kids, some block driveways or double-park. Others wave their children into the car-jammed street.

“I watch this kind of vehicular masochism each day,” said Baker, a complaint officer with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division. “It’s hard to watch the nurturers of our children act like roller derby skaters.”

Because such scenes are duplicated each day at elementary schools across Los Angeles, endangering children and crossing guards, city transportation officials are studying a proposal to videotape violators and ticket them by mail.

Private campuses as well as public schools could be subject to the new enforcement measures. But before implementing the program, Department of Transportation officials are consulting the city attorney’s office and checking to see how it would mesh with current ticketing procedures.

“It would be a way to spread resources, which are thin, and hopefully produce a much higher behavior-modification rate,” said city parking administrator Michael Inouye.

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Under the proposal, city parking enforcement officers equipped with video cameras would be dispatched to campuses that have generated complaints from neighbors, school officials or concerned parents. Motorists captured on video impeding traffic, double-parking or leaving a car unattended could expect to get a ticket in the mail ranging from $35 to $130 or more.

Baker said he pitched the idea to Inouye after receiving daily complaints from residents and school officials. Ticketing by mail, Baker said, would allow the unarmed parking officers to cite violators without the risk of being accosted by angry parents. Baker himself--a uniformed LAPD officer carrying his department-issued gun--recalls times when he has been verbally attacked by angry parents in a hurry.

“For those people concerned about the Orwellian aspects of Big Brother and a camera taping their violations, I personally believe child safety outweighs any negative impact video enforcement might produce,” Baker said.

Councilwoman Laura Chick said every school in her West Valley district has a traffic safety problem and it’s clear a lot of them are caused by parents.

“This program could be extremely helpful,” said Chick, who has invited Baker to discuss his idea before a group of principals and Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. presidents from more than 50 schools. “We’ve learned citywide that enforcement is the most effective way to get people to change their ways. It’s painful to have to pay a fine.”

Observers say the lack of etiquette around city schools has been triggered by a number of factors, including steadily growing student enrollment, parents’ heightened concerns over crime, a proliferation of two-income households and a 30% increase in traffic in the Los Angeles area over the last six years. As a result, not only are more parents than ever choosing to drive their kids to and from school rather than let them walk or take the bus, but the parents themselves are busier than ever, as are city streets.

“Society has changed . . . people are always in a hurry now,” said Chandler Elementary Principal Barbara Thibodeau, who supports the proposal. “Parents are rushing from work to get their kids. In a way, it’s kind of sad.”

It can also be dangerous.

Baker said no statistics are available on the number of accidents in school zones, but an abundance of anecdotal evidence suggests a problem exists. In separate incidents last year at Chandler Elementary, a crossing guard was seriously injured and a 9-year-old student was struck by a hit-and-run BMW driver.

Last month, a school crossing guard assigned to Shenandoah Street School in Los Angeles was hailed as a hero after pushing a 7-year-old boy out of the path of an oncoming car, only to be hit herself. She broke her leg and hip, sustained pelvic injuries and severed a thumb. Concerned parents are also quick to point to the death last November of Grant High School student Inna Marutyan, 16, who was jaywalking across Oxnard Street in Van Nuys when she was struck by a Jeep driven by another teenager.

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For every accident there are hundreds of near misses, say parents who have been stirred to action. At Woodlake Elementary, about 10 parent-volunteers have begun helping children quickly enter and exit family cars each morning and afternoon to help keep traffic moving smoothly and safely around the school.

Woodlake parent Mickey Hill said she organized the program about three months ago after her car was sideswiped in front of the school by a grandfather dropping off a student. She ordered cones and vests and made signs to remind parents that the streets bordering the school are no-parking zones and that U-turns aren’t allowed. The program was modeled after one at Welby Way Elementary in nearby Canoga Park.

“Most parents are grateful, but there are ones out there who have made it clear that they are only concerned about themselves,” said Hill, who along with her husband and father volunteers almost daily.

Linda Knolle, a volunteer whose son Ian is a first-grader at Woodlake, recounted a recent episode in which a parent refused Knolle’s request to pull her car forward in the drop-off area, and later told the principal that Knolle had called her a “bitch.” When the principal went outside and asked Knolle whether the woman’s claim was true, the woman who made the charge quickly changed her tune and said that Knolle had “said it with her eyes.”

Knolle and others say they embrace the idea of videotaping violators.

“It’s like chicken soup,” said Nancy Kaneshiro, another Woodlake volunteer. “There’s a chance it may not help, but it certainly won’t hurt.”

The ticketing proposal is based on a similar program in effect in Simi Valley, which had been plagued with similar problems around its schools. That is until Sgt. Jeff Malgren of the Simi Valley Police Department’s traffic unit sat in front of Valley View Middle School last November with a camera inside his marked police car.

“It really opened my eyes as to what was going on out there,” Malgren said. Rather than slow traffic even more by ticketing violators on the spot, Malgren said he sent 38 of them citations by mail after jotting down license plates from the videotape. The program was later modified to use tape recorders in place of video cameras.

Malgren estimated officers from his unit have issued 200 tickets in about four months, simply by reciting key information into cassette recorders.

“There seems to be a lot of compliance after we’ve targeted an area,” Malgren said.

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Baker said he favors the use of cameras over tape recorders because the video provides transportation officials with “indisputable evidence,” should a ticket be appealed. Some principals have begun sending home fliers with children, alerting parents to the ticketing proposal, he said.

If the proposal is adopted by the transportation department, it would most likely be tested first in one region of city, which likely would be the Valley. Eventually, Inouye said he envisions as many as 10 enforcement teams targeting problem schools throughout the city. The ticketing method may be used as an enforcement tool in street cleaning and peak hour traffic zones, he added.