It’s Elementary: Cars and Kids Don’t Mix at School

Traffic flows easily on Hobart Boulevard in South Los Angeles.

Until Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School lets out.

With no place to park on or off campus, many parents stop in the middle of the narrow residential street for what they think is a brief moment, snarling traffic behind them. Cars traveling south in the 3900 block of Hobart often get stuck behind a snaking line of cars stalled at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, with no traffic light or stop signs.

Frustrated by delays, drivers often resort to extreme measures to escape the gridlock, from reversing and making perilous U-turns to speeding away when they can.

“It’s bad,” said Brendia Powell, a parent with a daughter in fourth grade. “A few kids have gotten bumped” by cars, she said.

Powell and other concerned parents say their children are in danger of being run over and seriously or fatally injured by cars and trucks that choke Hobart at the beginning and end of the school day. They say they have been trying to enlist the help of the city and the school district for years, but to no avail. Letters within the last six months received only perfunctory responses, they said.

After inquiries from The Times, however, Los Angeles Unified School District officials and City Councilman Bernard C. Parks’ office scheduled a meeting for today to figure out a solution. King administrators and parents say they hope city and school district officials will finally take action.

“Hopefully there will be some changes that will be made for the safety of the children,” Powell said. “The whole situation, it’s just gone unnoticed for too long.”

Debra Vance, a librarian at the school for 22 years, said the problem has existed as long as she’s been there. She recalled a principal trying to direct traffic on Hobart 20 years ago.

“She would come out here everyday after school ... telling parents you can’t double park,” Vance said.

School-community liaison Frankie Morris, like the former principal and others before her, has taken it upon herself to try to get students on and off the campus safely.

On weekday mornings she arrives an hour before school starts to set up a makeshift lane, using small scuffed orange cones to direct cars curbside so parents can drop off children at the main entrance. Most parents appreciate the effort, but others don’t like the improvised system.

“I’ve been fussed at, I’m given the finger, they roll their eyes,” Morris said. But she said she wouldn’t be out there if she weren’t concerned.

School district officials denied being unresponsive to the school.

“Our director of facilities responded to health and safety issues,” said Sylvia Rousseau, an L.A. Unified regional superintendent. She pointed to major repairs her office has overseen since King Elementary fell under her jurisdiction in a districtwide reorganization last July.

Rousseau said the district has to work with the city to study traffic in the area and come up with an appropriate remedy. “We can’t make those traffic decisions without the city,” she said.

Michael Hopwood, a regional coordinator of operations and safety for L.A. Unified, said he last contacted Parks’ office about the problem in January and had been awaiting a response.

Parks’ district includes the 1,100-student school. His chief of staff, Bernard Parks Jr., acknowledged a “breakdown in communications” between field offices within the council district, delaying a response to parents and school officials.

“That will be corrected,” he said. “The councilman is very adamant about working with [the school] on [the] issue.”

Parks Jr. said the council office has assisted the school in the past, helping to keep a crossing guard at the intersection of Hobart and King. Most recently, the area field office worked to expedite the re-striping of a crosswalk at the intersection. A parent was hit by a car there in January. New traffic warning signs were installed and painted on the roadway to alert drivers to pedestrians.

The city also plans to install flashing yellow signals that will automatically activate when a pedestrian steps into the crosswalk.

King Elementary’s traffic problems are not unique within L.A. Unified, Rousseau said. Her office has been working with several schools on a variety of issues, including “the safe exiting of children,” she said.

Overcrowding throughout the district has contributed to chaotic traffic conditions and could be alleviated as the district builds new campuses, Rousseau said. School boundary changes in the area and a new school slated to open in the next school year will draw about 80 kids from King Elementary, easing congestion somewhat, she added.

But that will not be enough, according to Principal Francisco Gonzalez. He said the problem is exacerbated by a general lack of space on campus.

An inadequate parking lot has caused teachers to park on the edges of the school’s already cramped playground.

That has left little space for students to play safely. As a result, the school has four recesses and five lunch periods because the playground accommodates only one grade level at a time, Gonzalez said.

The staff also uses Hobart for street parking.

Parents also say the city made a mistake when it created a neighboring park that abuts the campus’ northern edge. The park took away some campus parking and closed a stretch of Hobart. Parents want the district and the city to negotiate an agreement that would allow the school to use part of the park for a playground during school hours.

L.A. Unified’s Hopwood said such agreements exist between the district and parks in other areas. Allowing students to play in the park would free the school’s blacktop playground for staff parking, he said.

Other proposals include making Hobart a one-way street and barring parking in front of the school during the school day. Some advocate an exit onto Western Avenue on the west side of the campus.