Students who walk to and from Guyer High School mostly travel on the shoulder of the traffic-congested Teasley Lane.

On a recent afternoon, more than three-dozen made that trip on foot down Teasley’s shoulder.

Parents have complained since before Guyer opened in 2005 that the students’ trek to school is not safe.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Guyer HIgh School students walk home along a congested Teasley Lane (FM2181). Some parents are concerned that it is unsafe. The school district does not provide buses for students who live within a two-mile radius of their school, but there is no sidewalk on Teasley beyond school property. Teasley is under the jurisdiction of Texas Department of Transportation.

Spokeswoman Sharon Cox said the Denton school district has been attempting to address the safety issues surrounding the high school campus and Teasley Lane, which is also FM2181, for nearly 10 years.

“We are doing everything to make sure students at Guyer are safe,” she said.

School district officials agree they don’t consider the walk down the shoulder of Teasley safe, but in the expansive school district, lack of funding limits its ability to provide bus service to all the places that may need it.

Officials at the Texas Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the road, says they will likely build a sidewalk, but it is waiting to do it when it widens the road to six lanes, a project that is delayed until at least 2010.

A parent whose child goes to another school along Teasley Lane has a separate concern.

L.A. Nelson Elementary School, which opened this fall, does not have any school zone signs indicating its presence on Teasley Lane.

The speed limit on Teasley is 50 mph in front of that school.

The elementary school sits at the corner of Ryan Road, and TxDOT officials say the light signal there acts as a sufficient traffic-controlling device.

The 180-square-mile school district is growing faster than the infrastructure in the outlying areas, school officials say.

Norm Sisk, the school district’s executive director of operations, said when it comes to those areas, developers or school districts get there first, and in planning, the district tries to address all the issues involved with a lack of infrastructure.

“We just can’t pull the string with TxDOT,” Sisk said, referring to how the schools have outpaced the transportation department in dealing with growth in some areas like Teasley.

The Teasley walkers

At 3:15 on a recent Thursday afternoon, a guard with the Denton school district set up cones at an entrance and exit for buses and Guyer High School students.

Not long after that, two off-duty Denton police officers arrived, parked their pickup with its lights on and got out. They set up at two other exits of the school.

The school district pays them to be there each day to direct traffic and help if any one needs to cross Teasley Lane.

Traffic starts to get heavy, but most vehicles adjust to obey the 35 mph speed limit for Guyer’s school zone.

Signs warn drivers of the possibility of students walking along the road or crossing.

School lets out at 3:50 p.m., and students start filing out. Some are driving and some are being picked up.

Others start their trek on foot or bicycle.

This particular Thursday, about 38 students on foot and one on a bike trickled along the sidewalk built on the school’s property heading northwest along Teasley — but once they are off the school’s property, the sidewalk ends.

They continued walking home, mostly on the small shoulder along the congested and curvy rural road.

The safety concerns were canvassed more than two years ago when Guyer opened, but nothing seems to have changed.

Parents are still concerned that it is unsafe, but the building of a sidewalk off school property seems to be tied to the widening of Teasley to a six-lane divided highway.

Barry Heard, an engineer in the area TxDOT office, said the plans have been delayed now until 2010.

Safety and funding

Gene Holloway, director of transportation for the school district, said many parents who move into the area question the students’ safety walking along Teasley. “There’s no question,” Holloway said.

Sisk said he understands their concerns.

“What happens here is it’s a matter of resources,” Holloway said. That’s why the district cannot provide another form of transportation.

The state does not require the school district, in most cases, to provide transportation to students who live within a two-mile radius of their school.

The district will bus students within the two-mile radius if the area they must walk through is considered hazardous.

Holloway said there has not been a change in state funding for public school transportation since 1985, but in the 20 years he has been with the district, fuel, maintenance charges, insurance rates, school bus costs and drivers’ wages are among expenses that continue to increase 20-fold.

For the 2006-07 school year, the Texas Education Agency allotted a little more than $1.4 million in funding for the district’s transportation, he said, but the actual funding the district received was around $599,000 because of the formula the state program uses to divvy up the money.

It costs more than $3.8 million for the district to run its current transportation program, Holloway said.

That means the state covers only 16 percent of the district’s transportation costs.

Holloway said taxpayers are covering the rest.

Funding for hazardous areas from the state, he said, is extremely inadequate.

Only 10 percent of state funds can go toward busing students in areas deemed hazardous, according to the TEA.

The average cost to operate one of the district’s 120-plus buses is between $24,000 and $26,000 per year, according to Holloway, and the district currently runs 22 bus routes in hazardous areas for 18 elementary and two middle schools.

At $26,000 per bus, that means the district is paying around $572,000 a year — about 15 percent of the district’s total transportation costs — to bus students in areas that would require them to walk across railroad tracks, Loop 288, Interstate 35 or U.S. Highway 380.

Only $59,900 of that figure could come from the state.

Project delayed, again

In a Sept. 7, 2005, school board meeting with the Denton City Council, according to documents provided by the school district, Buz Elsom, an area TxDOT official, presented an update on the FM2181 widening project.

In the update, the document stated that TxDOT would incorporate sidewalks into plans for widening the road “in accordance with policy.”

Glen Martin, district construction coordinator, said Thursday the school district continues to work with the city and TxDOT officials on the Teasley Lane safety concerns.

The estimated completion of the widening project, which is in its preliminary engineering process, could be three or more years after the project starts, said David Hensley, an area TxDOT engineer supervisor.

Heard, with TxDOT, pointed to funding and the ongoing environmental assessment as the main reasons for the delay.

He said the environmental study is in its second year and could take up to five years.

This is at least the third delay in TxDOT’s project to widen FM2181 from Lillian Miller Parkway in Denton to Interstate 35E in Corinth.

In April 2005, the project was set to start March 2007, and in June 2005, it was again delayed until August 2008.

In the meantime, students will be walking close by passing vehicles.

Hensley said TxDOT would build new sidewalks with its project if it is part of a local municipal plan and they are notified of it or if there is evidence of pedestrian traffic.

“I anticipate we will be constructing sidewalks out there,” said Hensley.

L.A. Nelson Elementary

Nelson Elementary, at the corner of Ryan Road, has been open since August and does not have any school zone signs on Teasley Lane directly in front of the school.

The speed limit is still 50 mph, and there are no students crossing signs.

The school district said that the school’s attendance zone ends at Teasley and that no students have to cross Teasley to get to school.

John Cabrales, spokesman for the city, said city engineer Bud Vokoun took part in a meeting with school and TxDOT officials before the school opened. School officials asked about a school zone but were told no for two reasons, he said.

Those reasons, Cabrales said, were because there are no crosswalks across Teasley to the school and because of the traffic light.

Hensley said he did not see a request for a school zone come through his office; otherwise, he said, he would have a copy on file.

Regardless, Hensley said, TxDOT would likely not warrant a school zone there because of the traffic signal at Ryan and Teasley.

“School zones are designed to slow traffic down for crossing traffic,” he said. “Not for slowing longitudinal traffic.”

“That [the traffic light] is the safest way to cross the road,” Hensley said.

“Signals are designed to stop people,” he said, adding that there have been cases in which school zone signs were taken down when a signal went up.

“That makes me mad,” said Kim Behringer, a parent of a student at Nelson.

She said there have been wrecks in the area, indicating that a vehicle traveling at 50 mph in front of a school is unsafe for children walking along the sidewalk.

“They’re [drivers] still flying through there,” Behringer said about the traffic signal’s control when the light is green.

In a situation similar to that at Nelson, parents were concerned with the lack of a school zone in front of two schools on Navo Road. Navo Middle School is in its second school year and Paloma Creek Elementary School opened in August.

Denton County, which has jurisdiction of Navo Road, was responsible for getting signs up in front of the schools, which are directly across the road from each other. Those signs went up Nov. 6.

Randy Stout, the school district’s legal adviser, said in a written statement that when the Nelson property was purchased, the operations department met with the city and TxDOT “to inform these two entities of Denton ISD’s intention to build this elementary school.”

“Denton ISD was very interested in when TxDOT would be working on FM2181 in front of the proposed school, the traffic signal at FM2181 and Ryan Road, and how the traffic would be regulated because of the new school,” he wrote.

Stout stated that at the time, TxDOT said construction of that portion of Teasley would be under way at the time Nelson was opening and that the intersection of Teasley and Ryan “would require re-engineering with a different traffic signal — which Denton ISD would be required to pay for (and that amount has already been approved by the board).”

The school district was able to meet the needs of area neighborhoods to both sides of Nelson Elementary with sidewalks.

It obtained the easement and built a sidewalk going from within the Summit Oaks subdivision to the school.

It also was able to build a sidewalk from the school along Teasley to the nearby mobile home park.

Martin said that was possible because the owners of the park gave the district the easement to construct the sidewalk.

As far as the district wanting a school zone for Teasley in front of Nelson, Sisk said, it is a given, as well as for areas that need sidewalks for students walking.

“We like to find every way to say yes than to say no,” he said.

“Our major difficulty is funding, and the current regulations and polices that govern that,” said Holloway.

“It really hits a nerve with me when you see a need and are not able to meet it,” he said.

For the future

Holloway said $4 million of the recent $282 million bond election, which passed in November, will provide the district with 44 new buses.

TxDOT has a program called Safe Routes to School, in which it “distributes designated state and federal funds to enhance safety in and around school areas,” according to a press release.

According to TxDOT, it encourages cities and school districts to work together to submit project applications and it awarded $24.7 millions to Texas schools in September.

Holloway said the district is working to analyze and investigate all of its campuses for traffic flow and the need for sidewalks and will apply to the city when done in order to submit to TxDOT for 2008 Safe Routes to School funds.

Transportation is also among the Denton school board’s top legislative priorities.

Sisk thinks that change to the state’s 22-year-old funding formula for transportation needs has to start at a grassroots level.

“If enough people put pressure on where it needs to be placed, then we’d see some change,” he said. “I think the elected official would listen to a citizen [more] than an official.”

AMY DODD THOMPSON can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is athompson@dentonrc.com.