I’m the proud parent of two sons who attended Quaker Valley School District. Until 2018, I had no cause for concern that QVSB would jeopardize children and resident’s safety when designing a new high school, which I believe we need.
However, safety in the design has been severely compromised over the last five years.
The recent school lockdowns in the area, numerous Camp Meeting Road closures in the last few months — including recent accident of a small Watson bus on April 15 that hospitalized three people — as well the horrific events at the Covenant school in Nashville, Tenn., demonstrate it’s time to put the safety of our children and residents first.
The average emergency response times will increase by a minimum 2-1/2 minutes or 75% from our current Beaver location. Just imagine what those extra minutes could mean if your loved one had a heart attack, severe allergic reaction, head or spine injury, stroke/seizure or any other life jeopardizing event.
The Quaker Valley School Board has the ability to mandate specific safety requirements in the site and school design. Most of the safety risks would be dramatically decreased if the QVSB simply went back to the site grading options that their expert, Gavin Boward Beitko, presented May 8, 2017. In the scope, they required two access points into site to make it adequate/safe for buses, typically a maximum 10% slope.
Safety always seems to come second to chasing after the unrealistic dream of the Taj Mahal on the Hill. QVSD has more than enough money to authorize $1.6 million for geotechnical services on a site whose zoning is still in question five years after purchase. We pay $120,000 a year from the budget to a lobbying firm, but use a temporary grant to outsource mental health and add another school officer. What happens when the money is gone? Yet, QVSB still hasn’t fully implanted the physical school safety projects requested (almost a decade ago) by Dr. Joseph Marrone, assistant superintendent. When will we be able to afford safety?
QVSD’s own expert’s responses at the Leet ZHB to several important safety issues — many times amounted to it’s too expensive to do that and won’t fit in the budget or Quaker Valley did not ask us to do it so we didn’t.
Oddly, QVSD did not have even one emergency response expert when they presented to the public.
The requirements the Leet ZHB established to immediately approve zoning were ones QVSD and our entire community should have supported and agreed to wholeheartedly: an emergency access road and complete indemnification of all downslope neighbors.
Instead, QVSD chose to ignore safety and appeal the Leet ZHB ruling.
QVSB has the ability to agree right now to the Leet ZHB’s very reasonable requests and get the entire community’s support, not just one faction. The question to ask is why did QVSD reject Leet ZHB condition for an emergency access road?
Kimberly Gatesman
Edgeworth Borough.
