VERO BEACH — The latest plans for new parent and bus loops for Beachland Elementary School on the barrier island was met with mixed reviews from the more than two-dozen residents and parents who attended a special meeting at the school Thursday evening.
The third plan for the school met the public’s request to spare the oak hammock, but did little to quell fears from those living on nearby streets that they would not be impacted by the traffic.
Prior to the meeting, School Board members had expressed cautious optimism that this plan might make all parties happy.
The newest plan calls for combining the kindergarten and first grade parent pickup/drop-off loop with the second through fifth grade loop and converting the K-1 loop into a new bus loop.
To accommodate the additional traffic from merging the two parent loops into one, John Binkley, of EDB Architects, has recommended double-stacking the vehicles on a winding road on the school’s campus, entering from Mockingbird Drive, traveling parallel to Beachland Boulevard/State Road 60, and hooking into the existing loop.
“This is the best solution” of all the proposals, Binkley told the audience.
A few specimen trees that were gifted to the school from the Rare Fruit Council would need to be relocated, according to Binkley. And the council has agreed to do so, he added. Other than that, there would be no impact to the oak trees on the campus.
Liz Stanley, a resident of Date Palm – a nearby street, voiced opposition to the plan, explaining that parents coming from over the bridge would have to go up Indian River Drive East and cut over, presumably, Date Palm, to get to Mockingbird’s entrance to the parent loop.
Stanley said the neighborhood could handle the few buses that cut through Date Palm on their way to the school because they were so few and traveled slowly.
To have parents cutting through Date Palm – “It’s going to be a disaster,” she said.
One woman who spoke during the meeting, Chris Yates, said she would be the last person to want to cut down a 200-year-old oak, but at the same time residents were going to be inconvenienced by trees.
“This is crazy,” she said.
“We’re going to have traffic or we’re going to lose some trees,” said Brooke Gustafsson. “It’s sort of simple.”
Nathan Polackwich suggested engineers consider reversing the proposed parent loop by having the traffic come in from Indian River Drive East and travel east parallel to Beachland and then double-back to the loop.
The idea received verbal support from some in the audience.
Binkley said he would examine that scenario but cautioned that it might lead to more pavement and difficult turns.
“I think we’re getting real close,” Binkley said of coming up with a solution for the traffic problem at Beachland Elementary.
He said he’d go back to the plans and try to work out a solution that wouldn’t impact Date Palm and the other neighboring roads.
Carter Morrison, the School District’s assistant superintendent of finance and operations, said after the meeting that officials would take into consideration the input received at this third public meeting.
He said because the summer is nearly over, construction on the new loops would not happen until the summer before the following school year 2013-14.
