Trending

Advertisement

Irate homeowners block popular school shortcut

Share

After years of putting up with kids cutting through their yards, debris left behind and parents parking on their street, a Westwood homeowners association has built a fence to block students from using a popular shortcut to Westwood Elementary School.

Unfortunately, some of Westwood neighbors and parents who let their kids use that path to get to school are upset about the new fence.

“We just wanted to put an end to it,” said a spokesman for Westwood II Homeowners Association, who asked not to be identified.

The homeowners, who live in townhomes in Westwood II, which abuts the back portion of Westwood Elementary, spent about $12,000 to build the fence.

The new fence was completed a few days after Thanksgiving, but before children were due back at school after sessions resumed on Nov. 29.

But not all the homeowners are happy about the actions of their association, which is supposed to represent their best interests, said Keta Roberts.

Roberts moved to the street about a year ago with her husband and a daughter, now a first-grader at Westwood, because of its closeness to the school.

But now her daughter has to walk on several other streets to get to school, including Poblado Road, which gets congested with school-bound traffic.

She never noticed any posted signs about not using the existing chain link fence on school property, which has a gate that remains open for easy access.

“I’d just like to impress on our association that there are other solutions to the small inconvenience of school children trying to make their way to school via my street,” Roberts said.

If the community had been asked to get involved, along with the association members, Roberts concludes that the outcome would have been more neighborly.

While Roberts said she was never notified about the fence going up, the association spokesman said the subject was discussed at a monthly meeting.

Putting up the fence didn’t require a vote by association

members, he said.

The association’s intentions are simple: stop the foot traffic, which will ultimately stop motorists from dropping kids off on Caminito Masada to access the school, he said.

The association’s board of directors had listened to complaints for years by residents who found that school parents were rude and inconsiderate when using their Westwood II neighborhood.

“Residents even got flipped off, but I was hoping for something more diplomatic than a fence,” said resident Bobbie Gieselman.

She knew that her association was contemplating the fence since July, but she was not present when the group voted, she said.

The fence went up “too quickly” without enough of a consensus from the neighbors, or those who used the shortcut, Gieselman said.

Knowing that the fence is now firmly in place has shocked school parents and kids, as well as Principal Mike Mosgrove, who said students used the passage for years as a quicker, safer way to get to school.

“I’d like to think we could sit down to talk about it,” Mosgrove said.

School parents heated up the phone lines Thanksgiving weekend, after they heard that the fence was up.

“It was really a safety issue,” said Cherri Sasson. “We didn’t want kids to be stranded, so we got to as many people as possible.”

Parents were worried primarily that children would be walking this week on much busier streets, such as Poblado Road.

Advertisement