Joint effort by Ascension Parish, school district aimed at easing carpool traffic woes – The Advocate

DONALDSONVILLE The Ascension Parish School Board and the parish government are looking at jointly tackling carpool traffic problems at some of the older schools in the parish, with a new venture at one of those schools, Galvez Primary.

Under a proposed agreement, the School Board would provide the design and construction materials and the parish will provide the labor to extend the carpool line which is now simply one lane of two-lane Bayou Henderson Road in front of the school with a gravel drive onto unused property on the school site, to get more carpool traffic off the road.

"This is the first of what could be more, future agreements," Chad Lynch, the district's director of planning and construction, told the board's facilities management committee at its meeting Tuesday.

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The committee voted to recommend that the full board approve the Galvez Primary agreement at its next meeting.

Older schools don't have the turn lanes that the fast-growing school district incorporates at the entrances to the schools it has built since 2000, Lynch said.

Parish council members this past summer asked Lynch and his staff to meet with the council's transportation committee to start working out a solution for the carpool traffic problems.

PRAIRIEVILLE Daniel Johnson and his neighbors in Parker Place Estates face an either-or choice on school mornings, they say.

In addition to Galvez Primary, other schools facing those traffic woes include Prairieville Primary, Oak Grove and Central Primary.

The School Board will vote on the Galvez Primary proposal at its first meeting in the new year, on Jan. 7.

The board will also be voting at that meeting on the renewal of another intergovernmental agreement between the school district and the parish, an existing one set to expire on Dec. 31, that allows the parish to use four schools as shelters in time of emergency.

The four-year agreement allows the parish to use Dutchtown High and Dutchtown Middle, on the east bank, and Donaldsonville High and Lowery Middle, on the west bank, as emergency shelters.

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Joint effort by Ascension Parish, school district aimed at easing carpool traffic woes - The Advocate