Parents Urge School Board to Help Address School Traffic Safety Issues

Jenna DeRemer (above) voiced concerns during the Warren County School Board’s meeting on Wednesday about illegal parking and reckless driving practices near Skyline Middle School.

If the Warren County School Board doesn’t help solve the traffic-related problems plaguing some of the schools in the area, then the lives of children are increasingly at risk, residents told board members earlier this week.

Front Royal resident Jenna DeRemer lives with her husband and children in a home on Overlook Drive near Skyline Middle School. They live next to her parents, Mark and Catherine Bower, the latter a former School Board chair for many years.

“I’ve lived on the street since I was a child,” DeRemer told the School Board during the public comment period of its Wednesday, November 1 meeting. “However, as an adult, over the past few years, I’ve grown increasingly concerned with the safety and congested traffic issues the school faces at daily dismissal.”

DeRemer told the board members that each of the four adults in her family who live on Overlook Drive have almost been in car accidents at least once due to illegal parking and risky driving practices occurring there. 

And when school ended last year, DeRemer said she very narrowly avoided hitting a student who had stepped out from between illegally parked cars in front of the crosswalk. “I had no visibility,” she said.

Deciding she wasn’t going to wait for a student to get hurt, DeRemer explained that this school year, she has contacted the school, local police, and now the School Board seeking help in addressing the traffic and dismissal issues she’s witnessed.

“The largest problem,” DeRemer told the board, “is that many parents are not opting to pick their children up in the designated pick-up line. Instead, their children are disingenuously being considered walkers and are coming to meet their parents wherever they have found space for their car that day on the street.”

Those same parents are oftentimes parked illegally and unsafely, sometimes on No Parking yellow lines next to Skyline Middle School or in the bike lane across the street from the school, she said. And when they’re parked on the yellow lines, they’re also blocking visibility to the crosswalk, in turn forcing students to step out unsafely from between parked cars.

“While the school does have a teacher that comes down as a daily crossing guard, he’s not there every day, and he occasionally comes after students have already started leaving the building,” said DeRemer.

Around the start of school in August, DeRemer said she contacted Skyline Middle School Principal Bobby Johnston to discuss this and other traffic-related concerns at the school. She said Johnston told her that the police needed to be the ones to take control of the situation.

When she contacted the Front Royal Police Department, though, DeRemer said they basically kicked the can back to the school.

DeRemer (above right) and her mother, Cathy Bower (above left), offered the School Board some suggestions, including sending a letter home to parents and guardians about the traffic problems and asking them for their help; putting out traffic cones or additional signage to prevent cars from illegally and unsafely parking; asking for more police involvement; and allowing parents to utilize the nearby, almost-empty parking lot next to the school’s track and field for parking.

“If you all do not work with the school and police to figure out a solution to these long-standing issues, I believe it is just a matter of time before a child is seriously injured, or worse,” said Bower, reading from her daughter’s statement in order to meet the community participation time limits. 

“I challenge you all to spend from 3:15 to 3:45 p.m. sitting on Luray Avenue to see what I see every day,” read Bower. 

“It’s a safety issue and could also be an attendance issue if it causes delays when dropping off kids,” said Alex Arestad of Front Royal (above), a parent of a student attending Ressie Jeffries Elementary School.

On Wednesday, Arestad told the School Board that similar issues occur at Ressie Jeffries during drop-off and dismissal. In fact, for years, he said, parents of students there have lined up their cars along East Criser Road directly in front of Samuels Public Library, Burrell Brooks Park, and the Culligan building down to Remount Road (Route 522) as they wait to pick up or drop off their kids.

“I noticed in the month of October that the Front Royal Police Department began preventing parents from lining up, starting at the recently painted crosswalk area, covering about four car lengths on East Criser Road in front of the library and on all the way down to Route 522,” Arestad said. “This prevents parents from continuing to line up there.”

At the same time, police officers have been on site to inform parents that rather than lining up, they must continue to circle the school area until there is room to pull in front of the cross-painted area. If they don’t, the officers have said that they would issue a citation, said Arestad.

“When calling the Front Royal Police Department to inquire about this new procedure, I was told that they are only enforcing the law as a result of this specific law enforcement project,” Arestad said, noting that by having more vehicles circling the school, there is an increased risk for accidents that could endanger the lives of students who are arriving or leaving the school.

If the police department plans to continue this law enforcement project, Arestad suggested that the School Board request that the Town of Front Royal or Warren County widen Criser Road down to Route 522 in order to safely accommodate parents waiting in cars to drop off or pick up students.

“Meanwhile, perhaps students of different grades could be released at half-hour intervals or something like that,” he also suggested.

Click here to watch the School Board’s meeting of November 1, 2023.