West Creek Academy has a traffic problem.
The school was envisioned and built as a neighborhood school for children of the Valencia villages of West Creek and West Hills. Problem is, the economy and a ten years worth of delays have slowed build-out of these two villages to a crawl. Nevertheless, Lennar completed construction on the $35M project earlier this summer. SUSD was eager to open a school competitive with charters/private/home school options and the site served as a solution for the now closed Bouquet Canyon & Emblem Elementary Schools.
SUSD estimates that only 80 of the 700+ WCA students are residents of West Creek/Hills.
The rest of the students are being trucked in from all over the valley, causing a horrendous backlog of cars stretching from West Creek’s campus on West Hills Drive to Copper Hill Drive, snarling traffic on the north SCV thoroughfare in the morning and afternoon hours.
Jessika, a West Hills resident and WCA parent, shared that some intrepid parents have found a way past West Hills’ gates, speeding down Coal Mountain Ct – the main artery in that community’s Castillo tract. ”I object to people parking and speeding in our community to avoid a traffic situation they’ve created by sending their kids to our neighborhood school.”
Admittedly, the first few days of any school opening – especially brand new schools like WCA – are going to be hectic. And the situation on Friday was improved from Thursday’s hellacious opening. But the nature of WCA’s enrollment is such that parents are driving from points all over the valley to shuttle their children to school.
And therein lies the rub for residents like Jessika: if it weren’t for these parents, WCA would still be mothballed.
The delays for both parents and commuters on Copper Hill are likely to continue unless a workable solution is developed. There is talk of alternative parking at a location near the fire station on Copper Hill, but nothing is definitive.
Parents with the time and initiative to bike or walk to WCA can utilize the paseo on the west side of the San Francisquito river (note: this is NOT the sweet San Francisquito Creek Trail). The south end of the paseo can be accessed from Newhall Ranch Road near the Tri Tipps BBQ parking lot . Another access point is at Decoro Drive adjacent the north end of Valencia HS.
Getting to WCA from the south end of the paseo, parents have two options: 1) the scenic path and egress at West Creek Park, or 2) go direct and suffer get a workout on the Decoro Drive hill, then take the Copper Hill sidewalk to WCA.
Of course, hitching a bike trailer up to take the little ones to school would be a rarity in SCV, but we offer this as a frustration-free, healthy and green alternative to your SUV.
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Thursday morning was a freaking disaster in no uncertain terms. We pulled into the left turn lane from Copper Hill onto West Hills at 8:05, and by 8:20 we still hadn’t turned left to go up the hill (school starts at 8:15!) so my wife & son jumped out of the car at the median, crossed the street during a break in traffic, and she walked him up the hill to class. I finally got to the front of the turn lane about 5 minutes later, and then sat there as the left turn signal got skipped for the NEXT FOUR CYCLES. People turning right off of Copper Hill onto West Hills were moving – 5-6 cars per green light – and people crossing from West Creek to West Hills were moving at 3-4 cars per green light – but people turning left were frequently stuck with no place to go since the street going up the hill was still packed when we had our green light. I finally got headed up the hill at around 8:30 or so, but by then my wife had walked my son into class and had left already. I picked her up on the side of the road and we scooted out of the neighborhood via West Hills which loops back to Copper hill further northeast.
Friday morning was still really backed up, but was far better than Thursday – probably fueled by the fact that far fewer parents felt the need to park and walk their child in since it was no longer the first day of school.
I hope next week is an even bigger improvement, because the current situation is insane!!
YES…the traffic here was a nightmare, partly due to the parents themselves. The key phrase here is Valet Line. Valet line does not mean you park you car in the valet line and get out to go get your child. It means, wait in the line and your child will come to you. My three kids figured this out and it was no problem.
At one point I was in the parking lot area in “the line” waiting to get to the valet and the idiot in front of me just got out of his car, put on his flashing lights, and came back 5 minutes later after getting his kid.
Mr. Pak will hopefully listen to some parents on how this will work and not to those who feel the need to walk up everyday to the gate to get their child and gossip with other parents.
Friday was a big improvement over Thursday, but the minimum days coming up should be a nightmare.
Every school has its traffic issues. Sounds as though that turn signal on Copper Hill needs to be looked at though. And they definitely need a “valet” system if they don’t already have it set up. I don’t have much sympathy for the neighbors. When you live next to a school, you always deal with such issues. It’s a trade off for the convenience of being that close.
We have a nightmare situation on Newhall Ave. with an elementary school, junior high and high school all within a couple blocks of each other. Parents don’t really want their kids walking the neighborhood down there on their own (there have been numerous incidents of girls walking to school being harassed and/or accosted) or taking the bus, which can involve transferring at the Newhall train station. It’s a pain, but after a couple of weeks, things settle down and people find their way through it.
Wondering what may be done to help alleviate some of this chaos. It was pretty bad. I sat still at the entrance to the parking lot (which was filled to the brink) for a good 20 minutes on Friday. I think they should allow parents to park on both sides of the street and into the empty housing development area until something is figured out. Until then, I’ll be getting there a good 30 minutes before school lets out. Side note: Imagine minimum days, when all classes are let out at the same time! Ugh.
First week of school is always this way. They can’t design roadways for this kind of peak traffic. Plan ahead!
You don’t think we DO plan ahead? Sheesh! You try sitting in a hot car with kids in the back seat who are MISERABLE, on a 1oo degree day, as your other child waits for you in the same heat, as you are pinned in on all sides a hundred yards from said child. It sucks. You watch, things will change. Plan ahead? Don’t have kids if you think planning will solve a problem like this.
School starts at 8:15. I live 5 minutes from the school and left at 7:30. I would think 45 minutes was enough planning ahead.
Thomas:
Are there any kids with whom yours can carpool?
I don’t know…..maybe I can join your carpool.
Here Here, Thomas.
From a local .gov perspective I can’t think of a way to really plan for a school like this. If it’s true that just over 10% (or so) of the students are from the immediate neighborhood, then you will have the vast majority of parents driving from all corners of the valley to get there.
Which means you can’t really predict where the traffic is coming from and therefore you can’t offer any alternatives for parents. The only “known” is that all trips will converge on a given spot during a given point in the day.
I guess that was the point of old fashioned yellow school buses; they were built specifically for these scenarios, but those have been phased out to a large extent in our area.
Aaah…schoolbuses. Saugus used to use these, but now they are just parked in a parking lot near the aquatics center. Saugus claims they have no money to operate these buses, but they had the money to open this school.
Thomas:
SUSD in fact did NOT have money to open the school which is why it became an academy so they could gin up enough heads so the state per capita money would pay the operating bills.
I know…I was being sarcastic. After Emblem closed, and Saugus lying to everyone that it would reopen in 2011, Westcreek seemed the best place to go. Most of my kids friends opted for Westcreek, so we did to. The point about the buses is that Saugus has screwed up the boundaries so much, there is going to be traffic everyday going to and from the various schools.
To the people posting that the parents that like to stay after school, are merely there to gossip, you are ridiculous! You’re probably one of the parents that has no involvement in the PTA, and you probably don’t know any of the kids that your child hangs out with either. How sad! I am so happy to have gotten our children into WCA, and moved to the neighborhood to do so. I love to stay after and really get to know the teachers and parents. It just makes sense to me. I could never be so un-involved to just drop them off and not look back!
WCA has a MAJOR traffic problem, but I am confident that Mr. Pak and his team can make it work. It will just take some time. My frustration was the fact that my daughter, who is in Kindergarten, was waiting in 103 degree heat for 45 mins yesterday!! I suggested a canopy and he said it’s on order.
Thank you for not simply stating a problem but also for providing several viable solutions to the problem. I hope people will follow the advice you gave. As an aside, the enrollment at WCA is 634, not 700+. Much of the problem you talk about, though, was what ocurred on the first day of school when parents wanted to park and escort their kids onto school grounds in the morning, and in the afternoon, parents had parked and left their cars in what was supposed to be the valet pick-up lane. These traffic and parking problems were very quickly addressed by principal Cory Pak by A) not allowing parking in the valet lanes, and B) creating a much longer valet drop-off lane in the morning (huge improvement), and C) by creating two lanes of valet pick-up in the afternoon from two different points (another huge improvement). But if after these improvements, the traffic is still a issue, then we should all remind ourselves that this is a commuter school and we knew that when we applied. So I hope that parents will be patient and understanding while the bugs of this new school are being worked out and trust that they will. Other than this traffic issue, there’s so much to love about this school and let’s all keep that in mind as we’re waiting our turn in the valet. I applaud Mr. Pak for his quick responsiveness to the problem and for the successful opening of this school in absolutely every other way, the ways that really matter – in the classroom!!! As an aside, my kids love this school (and so do I) and when I’m sitting in 105 degree heat waiting for them, I tell myself that the traffic is a small price to pay for such a great school that my kids are excited about going to everyday!!!
WCA Parent:
The traffic issues have indeed been largely alleviated though they are a few orders of magnitude above neighboring schools.
Other than open an auxiliary area for parking or encouraging more carpools, there’s not much more than can be done.
The parents and kids that walk to school (there are only a few, but they are the ones paying for it!) are inconvenienced by the measures taken to resolve traffic, now having to walk clear to the north end of the campus to access the school. In the mean time, parents who drive burn gas and run their ACs while shuttling kids to/from WCA express complaints about the wait.
Principal Pak has thankfully added canopies to shade from the heat, but the measures unfortunately remain an inconvenience for those that walk.
RE: the count of students – thanks for the correction. There were ~70 slots reserved for new residents of West Creek/Hills that may move to the area in the course of the school year.