Girl Scouts work to improve bus safety

Keeping kids safe and addressing the problem of drivers passing stopped school buses was the goal of three local Girl Scouts as they worked towards earning their Silver Award.

Olivia Wilkenson, Emma Whitehead and Kymani Reid are members of local Girl Scout Troop 1932, and for about a year now they've been working to help their community and reach an important Girl Scouts milestone.

"[The Silver Award] is the second-highest award in Girl Scouts, and in order to complete it we have to find a problem in our community and create a lasting solution," Wilkenson explained.

All three Girl Scouts, along with Sweetwater County School District No. 2 Transportation Supervisor Rachel Todd, spoke to the School District Board during their meeting Tuesday night to give a presentation about their project.

"For our Girl Scout Silver Award project, we decided to improve the school bus loading zones in our community," Wilkenson told the board. "We wanted to make our city safer, and with the perspective of students, we were better able to determine how to make loading zones safer for everyone."

The presentation included two videos showing the dangers surrounding students getting on and off of buses, particularly from drivers who don't stop. One video presented the statistic that 16 million motorists illegally pass stopped school buses each school year. The second video showed camera footage of close calls for students from passing cars.

"As you can see, it's a big problem," Wilkenson said.

For their project, the Girl Scouts specifically looked at Green River's loading zones and the local students who use them.

"Even after Transportation planned the bus routes so that the fewest amount of kids would have to cross, there are still about 68 of them who cross the street twice a day every day," Wilkenson explained. "The last thing we want is for a child to get severely injured or even killed."

After evaluating the situation, the girls decided to focus on specific schools, and they worked on making improvements at Harrison, Truman, Monroe, Washington and Lincoln.

At several of the schools, the girls refreshed paw prints that have been painted on the ground to "lead kids from the bus out of the danger zone into the building," Whitehead explained.

Refreshing the paw prints made it "so the students and staff were able to see them more clearly, therefore lowering the risk of a child getting hit," Reid pointed out.

At Monroe, the Girl Scouts added a sign warning that "violators will be fined."

"This is to inform the public about fines for passing stopped school buses before they get fined and hopefully refraining people from running the red lights in the first place," Whitehead said.

"At Lincoln, the problem we noticed was that parents would drive into the bus loading/unloading zones to drop off their kids, then endangering the kids getting on and off the bus," Whitehead explained. "Therefore we added signs that read 'parent' above the already existing exit and entrance signs where the proper parent drop-off is. This will hopefully guide confused guardians and reduce the amount of people who do this." 

At Washington, the Girl Scouts added both the "violators will be fined" sign and another sign to make it more clear where the bus loading zone is. However, they also noticed more potential problems with the bus loading system at this school.

"During our ride-along and interviews with the bus drivers, we found that teachers and parents would drive past stopped school buses to get to the parking lot, endangering the kids along the way," Whitehead said.

Brainstorming ways to solve the problem, the Girl Scouts came up with the suggestion of removing a cement and grass curb that separates the parking lot from the current bus loading zone and adding a fence to separate the buses from the rest of the parking lot. This would keep cars from having to stop for the buses, allow the buses to get closer to the school so students don't have to cross the parking lot to reach them, and add extra parking space for parents and teachers.

Board Chairman Steve Core asked later in the meeting if these proposed changes could be looked into further by the district, saying they seem to make sense and the project could probably be done "in-house."

"It's just been a joy to be able to see a fresh set of eyes looking at our school bus loading zones and listening to their wonderful ideas," Transportation Supervisor Rachel Todd of working with the Girl Scouts, giving them credit for their ideas and their work. "This is their project that I am just thrilled that I was able to be a part of."

The Girl Scouts also expressed their gratitude to everyone who helped them finish the project, with Reid adding that "it was a very long 50 hours" to reach their goals and earn their Silver Award.