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Thanks and remeber to VOTE for Joe Ross on Nov 3rd for South Jordan City Council

As most of you know, Daybreak welcomed a brand new elementary school this year: Early Light Academy. Along with hiring teachers, planning curriculum, and ordering desks, the school board at ELA has prepared for its first school year by giving consideration to its students’ daily commute to and from its doors. Working with the South Jordan Police Department, the school established a Safe Walk Route (every school in Utah has one) which shows families the safest ways to walk to school from the surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, when significant roads have to be crossed without crosswalks or crossing guards, “safe” becomes a relative term.

For the kids who walk to Early Light Academy, there are two considerably dangerous roads to cross. A crosswalk on the east side of the school is the major entrance and exit to the school grounds, and it runs through a street which, while empty throughout the day, becomes overrun by parent’s vehicles before and after school. But after the kids walk past some weedy empty ground and down a short side-street, they come to Grandville, a wide, hilly, curving thoroughfare (as far as Daybreak streets go). And across the street these kids go—several sidewalks emptying in several places up and down the street, no designated crosswalk, and definitely no crossing guard. There are usually about 100 children streaming across Grandville every day, and at least five or six cars, if not more, zooming up the hill in that half-hour after school. It’s chaos.

At the other schools in Daybreak, when parents are concerned about the streets their children have to cross, they accompany them to school. But at both street crossings at Early Light Academy, a few parents and teachers have taken it upon themselves to shepherd children across with no school-zone signs, no hand-held stop sign, and no reflective safety jacket. They’re taking their lives in their own hands, as well as the lives of the children they help across the street. While this may be commendable, it’s really dangerous—not just for their safety but the liability, if anything were to happen, would be pretty formidable.