The preliminary findings of a consultant hired by the Mineola School District to study the impact on traffic of leasing the Cross Street School to the Solomon Schechter Day School in Glen Cove call for Solomon Schechter to schedule arrival and dismissal times to not overlap with neighboring St. Aidan’s School, staggering buses at the end of the school day and acquiring off-site parking spaces.
Robert Eschbacher a principal consultant for the VHB Engineering, presented the report to the Mineola School District on Wednesday stressing that the findings were only a “status update.”
Eschbacher said that before releasing its final report the firm intends to further document bus movements, parent drop offs and pick up behavior, pedestrian activity, parking utilization, as well making an inventory of traffic items and traffic regulations surrounding the Cross Street School and St. Aidan School locations.
“We’re also planning additional visits to the site, now that the school vacations are over,” Eschbacher said.
Eschbacher said the final report will not be ready for another two to three weeks and stressed the need for the project to be done right.
“We want to do this properly and not rush the report,” Eschbacher said.
Prior to Eschbacher’s presentation, Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler also cautioned that the findings were only “preliminary info.”
“This is not a written report,” Nagler said. “This is just a conversation with the board.”
The Mineola School District commissioned the $15,000 traffic study following a heated Village of Williston Park Board of Trustees meeting in which residents said the lease to Solomon Schechter could create traffic and safety problems while also objecting to the potential loss of access to the school’s ball fields by the CYO and the Williston Park Little League.
VHB Engineering was hired shortly after by the Mineola School District at the recommendation of the Village of Williston Park. Since the Mineola’s traffic study has begun, the Village of Williston Park has hired a consultant to review the findings found in Eschbacher’s report.
“We did suggest a company and we do believe the company is reputable and wouldn’t skew the results,” Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said. “Even so, our board did want to have oversight to make sure our concerns are addressed.”
At the school board meeting, Eschbacher presented three recommendations developed in the firm’s initial review.
The first was the need for the Solomon Schechter Day School’s arrival and dismissal times to not overlap with those of St. Aidan’s School, which is located across Willis Avenue in Williston Park from the school.
“This clear separation in time will help the two to coexist in a reasonable amount of time, and we’d like to keep that.” Eschbacher said.
The second recommendation centered around the need for Solomon Schechter to “stagger” the dismissal of their busses at the end of the school day. He said he believes all of the busses leaving at once would not make for desirable conditions, and could lead to traffic being backed up on Cross Street.
Eschbacher’s final recommendation involved the amount of parking needed for Solomon Schechter students.
One of the upgrades to the Cross Street School will include a parking lot expansion that will create an additional 78 parking spaces. However, there are 68 faculty members Solomon Schechter Day School, leaving only 10 additional spaces for students, Eschbacher said.
“I would recommend that Solomon Schechter look into acquiring off-site parking, because even with the parking lot upgrade, there will not be enough spots to accommodate students.” Eschbacher said.
During the Village of Williston Park hearing, Rabbi Levl Hernson, the CEO and head of Solomon Schechter School of Glen Cove, said the school currently only had 50 seniors and less than 20 of them drove to school. Hernson said he expected the numbers of seniors to drop to 20 in the 2011-2012 school year.
He said the school would consider a ban on students driving to school for the first year if it was found necessary to avoid parking and traffic problems.
