An increase in traffic at our main entrance has led to safety concerns. The buses coming to the main entrance, parents dropping their students off, and individual students parking their cars have led to a traffic jam. To correct this problem a new traffic pattern is being implemented at Urbana High School. All students will be dropped off at the auditorium entrance or at the gymnasium doors only. The main entrance will be designated only for buses and student parking.

Even though the traffic pattern is changing, this probably will not have a huge effect on the amount of traffic we have in the morning, especially between 7:15- 7:30. Most cars usually come no earlier than 7:15 and that creates a huge jam in the morning.

Parents try to drop their kids right at the door not realizing that it would be much more efficient if at least 5- 6 cars in the line dropped off their students at the same time.

Assistant principal Jack Sclar said, “It’s all about the safety of our students and staff members. We noticed that it’s chaotic [in the morning]. It is not for convenience, it is for safety 100%.

Sclar made some suggestions on how we could ease the traffic in the mornings. “Students who drive to school should obey all traffic rules at all times, and students should not drive/ walk in a bus’s blind spot,” he said.

“Anytime you get 500- 700 people trying to get in a parking lot in a compressed time period, traffic is inevitable,” said Sclar. Even though tickets are not being written for violations right now, they might start writing tickets in the future if it starts getting out of hand.

Deputy Brian Stocks said, “We have a new traffic pattern to ensure safety of all students and to prevent accidents with school buses and cars,” said Stocks. He thinks that this will not ease the overall traffic because the same numbers of students are still being dropped off. “We can try to encourage more students that live in the villages to walk to school to relieve the traffic a little,” he said. He also said that so far most people have been complying with the new rules and that they have been seeing a change.

Leigh Young, student support teacher, emphasized that safety is our number 1 priority. Young suggested that students who live in close proximity should carpool, and walk to school when the weather is appropriate.