Morning and afternoon school buses and parent cars at Amity Elementary Center (AEC) will each have new traffic patterns beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 8, the first student day in the Daniel Boone School District.
AEC Principal G. Dane Miller presented the new traffic plan at the Sept. 2 Amity Township Board of Supervisors meeting.
Parents will continue to enter the AEC campus from Old Airport Road to Rosecliff Drive and then drop off and pick up in front of the school at Boone Drive.
Miller said parents will no longer drop off at the playground lot, and they will only be allowed to exit the same way that they entered.
Cars will not be permitted to travel north on Boone Drive, where buses will now stage.
The elementary school’s 11 buses will load and unload in the AEC playground lot after entering Cemetery Lane from Old Airport Road and staging at the north end of Boone Drive (behind River Rock Academy and the district’s administrative offices).
“The proposal for bus traffic at AEC this school year is based on a couple of issues,” said Miller in a memo that outlined the traffic plan.
“Our buses were stuck on Old Airport Road on a daily basis due to parent traffic waiting to get into Boone Drive. After parents dropped off students in the back (playground lot), they would speed through the stop signs next to the school on their way to work.”
Miller said parents running the stop signs had resulted in several “near-collisions,” which the bus drivers were able to avoid.
He said the new traffic pattern will prevent the parent cars and buses from “interacting.”
It will also provide two separate ingresses and egresses.
AEC’s unloading after 8:20 a.m. and afternoon loading after 3:10 p.m. will not interfere with the loading and unloading at River Rock Academy.
Miller said River Rock Academy students arrive before 8 a.m. and depart by 2 p.m.
Amity Police Chief Kent A. Shuebrook said the township should begin considering a $30,000 line item for six police body cameras.
The camera hard drives would be installed in the department’s six cars, ready for downloading camera data after used by an officer.
