Two privately hired traffic officers stood outside LISA Academy Thursday afternoon, directing parents away from private drives and keeping cars from obstructing traffic.
The measure along with seven other changes to the Little Rock charter school’s traffic plan for student pickup were put into effect earlier this school year to ease some of the concerns about traffic on Corporate Hill Drive and other neighboring roads caused by an increased student enrollment.
But regardless of whether the traffic measures work, the increased enrollment is in violation of a condition the Little Rock Planning Commission placed on the school in 2011. The school has filed an appeal to the Little Rock Board of Directors, which will vote May 7 on whether to schedule a public hearing for May 21.
The Planning Commission capped the school’s enrollment at 600 in 2011 after a traffic study of after-school pickup patterns. The school sought and won approval in April 2012 from the state Board of Education to increase its enrollment to 800students.
The school began accepting applications, taking students based on a lottery from its waiting list. As of this week, the school’s enrollment was at 790, putting the school’s administration in violation of the commission’s cap, city Planning Department staff members said.
“If we had realized we needed to come back to the city before we went to the state Board [of Education], we definitely would have done that,” said Cuneyt Akdemir, the principal of the LISA Academy’s high school program. “It was a mistake, and when we realized, we came to the commission and worked with city staff to deal with the traffic concerns and be good neighbors.”
The enrollment cap isn’t a typical issue for schools, but because LISA Academy had to get a conditional-use zoning designation to locate in the office park, the Planning Commission had more leeway to set rules to ease the school’s impact on existing neighbors and uses.
The Planning Commission voted against allowing the enrollment increase in March.
“We were blindsided,” Akdemir said. “We thought we would get approval because we had worked with city staff to decrease the traffic concerns, and a lot of the problems had been successfully resolved.”
City Attorney Tom Carpenter said that if the enrollment increase is not granted as part of the school’s conditional zoning, the school will have to reduce its enrollment to 600 or find a different location.
Jess Askew III, an attorney for the school, said he doubts that the Board of Directors will allow the traffic issue to get that far.
“As a community and as people, we’re better than that,” he said. “I don’t think the city will risk the education of 200 kids over complaints from two neighbors. I’m not saying the city will steamroll those people, but there is a balance of interests that has to take place.”
City officials and Planning Department staff said almost all of the complaints,which were the reason the city checked on the school’s enrollment numbers, were about traffic and the problems it causes for nearby businesses.
Akdemir and other school officials said they have put new measures in place, such as a staggered dismissal time that releases middle school and high school students 25 minutes apart, having most after-school traffic enter the site via Executive Court to free up Corporate Hill Drive - the main access road for many of the area businesses.
The school, which enrolls students in sixth-through-12th grades, is housed in two buildings on Corporate Hill Drive, which runs south off West Markham Street, near the intersection of Interstates 430 and 630.
LISA Academy recruited all administrative staff members, from the principals to the superintendent, to help direct and keep traffic orderly when middle school and high school students leave for the day. They also require parents who arrive early to circle around the office park and return to the end of the line.
Nat Banihatti, the city’s traffic systems manager, said the school’s plan has helped, but no system is perfect.
“It has made a significant improvement in the traffic,” he said. “A lot of teachers and staff are coming out to direct traffic along with two officers. If they continue what they are doing, it should work, but there is no guarantee that it will solve things forever. If a teacher is out, or there is some outside circumstance, it may get worse.It’s a delicate balancing act when you deal with traffic.”
Banihatti said city staff had been at the school almost every day for four weeks to observe the new traffic measures and take stock of their effectiveness.
Askew said he hopes the Board of Directors will consider the input from the Planning Department staff, which recommended approval of the increase in enrollment. If the board denies the school’s request, he said the school will submit to the Planning Commission its newest traffic plan, which will stagger release times by 50 minutes.
That plan was created in April, but the school did not implement it because staff members didn’t want to throw a wrench in student schedules or tinker with the schedule of the school day.
“The current traffic initiatives have helped a great deal in alleviating the issues that were a concern to neighbors,” Askew said. “This newest plan will help immensely more than that. Our hope is that the board will consider the situation as it stands rather than how it was on the first day or the first week of school. This new plan will suit everybody and show the school’s effort to be a considerate neighbor.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/26/2013