Many Parents Are Flunking Traffic Safety, Schools Report

The principal of a Santa Ana school called police Wednesday after more than a dozen drivers ignored the crossing guard and zoomed through the crosswalk as children were headed across the street.

“They just speed through when there’s people in the crosswalk, even though there’s the crossing guard with a yellow jacket and a huge red stop sign,” said Kathy Roe, principal of Rosita Elementary School.

It happens every day, a steady source of worry for Roe. But on Wednesday, the crossing guard was able to record the license plate numbers of the 14 speeding cars.

Drive by almost any school in Southern California minutes before the morning bell and chaos reigns. Parents double-park, empty cars are left running on the curb, small children dart between cars to cross the street and harried parents honk their horns.

Officials say traffic hazards outside schools are a growing problem, underscored Tuesday when a crossing guard was struck and killed by a teenage motorist outside a North Hollywood elementary school.

“When school starts at 8, 1,000 students converge on one site in a 10-minute window,” said Donald Zimring, deputy superintendent of the Las Virgenes School District in Calabasas. “There is nothing you can do to make it good. Parents gladly stand in line for three hours to go on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but they can’t wait six minutes to drop their kid off at school.”

School district, safety and law enforcement officials say the traffic problem is yet another side effect of overcrowded schools. To ease the congestion, exasperated school officials are devising innovative ways to curb the maneuvers of impatient, discourteous or time-challenged parents during the morning drop-off.

In Los Angeles, the city department of transportation has formed a unit to film renegade drivers. It has been called out to 67 schools across the sprawling district and has issued hundreds of citations. But when traffic officers, volunteers or teachers try to intervene, tempers flare and curses fly.

“If I’m not standing right there--and even if I am right there--parents double-park, park on the opposite side of the street and send their kids running across,” said Sandra McGuern, principal of the Cantara Street School in Reseda, who called in the video team this month as a measure of last resort. “This morning I had this one . . . my mouth was agape. They did not even come to a complete stop. They just slowed down and the kid jumped out.”

Laguna Beach School Institutes ‘Turnaround’

After a couple of students were nearly hit by parents dropping off their children, administrators at Top of the World Elementary School in Laguna Beach essentially banned parents from driving onto campus at the beginning and end of the school day.

“Most parents follow the rules, but all it would have taken is one child getting hit and I wouldn’t be able to live with that for the rest of my life,” Principal Nancy Blade said.

Since May, parents have not been allowed to enter the school’s drive-through parking lot during the morning arrival and afternoon dismissal hours. Instead, a traffic “turnaround” was created just off campus, at a spot where children don’t have to cross the street.

At least two children have been hit by cars in the San Fernando Valley so far this school year, according to Officer Norman Kellems of the Los Angeles Police Department’s traffic safety unit. And Robert Yalda, director of transportation and intergovernmental relations for the city of Calabasas, said that schools in the Las Virgenes School District average half a dozen accidents annually, ranging from fender benders to those injuring students.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, car crashes involving child pedestrians are the second-leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 14. Each year, about 675 children die of motor vehicle-related pedestrian injuries, and an additional 20,000 more are injured.

Orange County drivers are among the worst offenders in the nation when it comes to driving irresponsibly in school zones, according to a survey released in September by the National Safe Kids Campaign, a child safety advocacy group.

The study found that while 65% of drivers nationwide go 5 mph over the posted speed limit in school zones, 87% of those in Orange County speed near schools.

The worst spot, according to the study, is Rosita Elementary School in Santa Ana, where the crossing guard took down license plate numbers Wednesday. “One hundred percent of the cars [at Rosita] were traveling above the posted speed limit,” said Angela Mickalide of the National Safe Kids Campaign.

“There’s an expectation that school zones are the safest places for children to walk,” said Mickalide. “However, our study suggests that children are in tremendous danger from speeding cars in the morning and after-school hours. It speaks to the general sense of urgency that society has today, that everyone is in a rush to get from one place to the next.”

There’s more to it than a society in a hurry, other authorities say. Many older schools are surrounded by narrow residential streets that were simply not built to handle large volumes of traffic--and ever-larger SUVs and minivans.

And 30 years ago, according to researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than two-thirds of American children walked to school. Today, that percentage is less than 10. So a lot more cars are heading to campus these days.

Programs implemented across the Southland to deal with the problem range from coercive to creative.

“We found from experience that citation is the best educational tool,” said Lt. Linda Browne, who heads the Los Angeles department of transportation’s video enforcement program.

Joe Nardulli, coordinator for the school traffic and safety education section of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that valet programs have been introduced at about 17 schools citywide.

At Bassett Street School in Reseda one morning this week, five parent volunteers in orange neon baseball caps stood along the curb in front of the school. Parents maneuvered their cars into the cone-delineated chute. The “valets” opened passenger doors to help unload students, then waved parents on. At Top of the World in Laguna Beach, principal Blade is the valet.

District Rewards ‘Walking Warriors’

Like other districts in the state, Calabasas promoted a Safe Walk to School Program, dispensing maps and safe routes to encourage children to walk and ride bikes to school and rewarding them with $20 bills, Barnes & Noble gift certificates and even free bicycles.

Children who walk to school are called “walking warriors” or “traffic-busters.” If they arrive 20 minutes before school 20 times in a month, they earn a badge designed like the “Ghostbusters” logo.

Still other schools are trying to legislate a little bit more courtesy from drivers.

Two years ago, an incident involving an out-of-control driver prompted the Capistrano Unified School District to pass an anti-rudeness policy.

At Del Obispo Elementary School in San Juan Capistrano, then-Principal John Allen was directing after-school traffic when he saw a black Ford pickup speeding in the parking lot and headed right toward the children in the crosswalk. He tried to stop the pickup, but the driver leaned out the window and yelled at Allen--who was ushering students across the crosswalk--to get out of the way.

When Allen warned the driver of the 5-mph speed limit, the driver got out and threatened to beat him up.

The incident concluded with the driver speeding through the crosswalk, brushing a teacher holding a stop sign and setting her spinning.

The driver received three years’ probation, Allen said.

Times staff writers Anna Gorman, David Pierson and Erica Hayasaki contributed to this report.