City Council approves school transportation safety initiative

By Kari Harden
Contributing Writer

The New Orleans City Council voted unanimously last month to adopt an ordinance creating the Orleans Parish Schools Safe Routes to School Initiative.

A new Safe Routes to School office will provide “education, encouragement, enforcement, engineering and evaluation,” according to a press release from District B Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, with the goal of seeking “solutions to the dangers within the New Orleans school transportation system.” Cantrell was one of the authors of the ordinance.

The $140,000 in funding allocated from the Local Foundation Grant Funds will provide for a Grant Coordinator position under the Health Department for a two year period at $70,000 per year.

The ordinance came out of the 2014 tragic death of six-year-old Shaud Wilson, who was killed in a “hit and run” accident on Paris Avenue in Gentilly. Shortly before 7 a.m. on Feb. 3, 2014, Shaud and his siblings were crossing four lanes of traffic on their way to their school bus stop when a car drove through the intersection of Paris and Lafreniere Street, hitting Shaud and his sister before leaving the scene.

About six hours later, the driver, 22-year-old Arthur Toledano, was arrested and charged with manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and hit-and-run.

The new Safe Routes to School office was formulated through a partnership between the council, the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), the Recovery School District, the School Transportation Safety Working Group and the New Orleans Health Department.

The ordinance transfers funds provided by the OPSB toward staff within the Health Department, who will work toward creating safer infrastructure for the city’s children, and allow the city to commission an examination of existing bus routes, as well as hire additional crossing guards.

Cantrell called it “an important step in the right direction.”

With the past decade of education reform around “school choice,” a persistent criticism has been related to transportation, and a new landscape in which children are bussed immense distances across the city, often before the sun rises and after dark. Current efforts are also working to change bus routes and schedules which force young children to wait for busses as early as 5:30 a.m.

The new initiative between the city and the public schools will work to “increase safety for students going to and coming from school by identifying troubled traffic corridors, developing guidelines to improve safety in those corridors, and developing a citywide school safety campaign,” according to the ordinance.

Nationally, Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs have been created in numerous communities, working to make walking and biking conditions safer and more accessible. The effort also has a focus on improving health and fighting obesity.

“The memory of a Shaud Wilson will forever be with us,” Cantrell said in the release. “But it is reassuring to know that so many talented and dedicated people and organizations stepped up to ensure our children’s safety and, hopefully, prevent another tragic death from occurring in the future.

This article originally published in the August 1, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.