To my mind, the BUSD has never addressed the issue of increased car traffic at elementary schools due to its policy of sending children to schools outside their neighborhoods. These schools were never intended to have large numbers of cars dropping kids off. Most of them are in residential neighborhoods with little parking, there are no driveways or parking lots, and with all the traffic diverters in Berkeley, cars are all funneled onto a few residential streets that have to somehow accommodate all this traffic, including double parking, illegal u-turns, children on foot, and all the rest.

Before the “zones”, there was the “two-way busing” – my older kids were at Emerson then. Most of the neighborhood kids walked to school, and there was a bus for the out-of-neighborhood kids. You didn’t see that many cars dropping kids off, and fewer buses were needed because the kids came from just one other neighborhood, not from all over the zone. When my kids went to Emerson, they walked, and there was always a crossing guard stationed at the Garber/College corner the poster is complaining about. (And that brings up another point: What has happened to all the crossing guards at BUSD schools? There is one at Le Conte, but she is stationed at the opposite end of the block from where all the cars are dropping kids off.)

I think often about the little boy who was killed last year. I believe he lived nearest to Emerson, but he attended Le Conte, and had taken the bus to an afterschool program closer to home when he was hit, on a street that has much too much traffic on it, due in part to all the traffic diverters in Berkeley. It seems to me that the BUSD and the city traffic dept. ought to take at least some of the responsibility for that terrible accident. It seems like they should be looking for ways to avoid such a thing happening again.