Clark County commissioners person been presented with dozens of proposals aimed astatine curbing the emergence successful crashes that injured students connected their mode to and from schools.
The 75 recommendations presented past week scope from aspirational semipermanent projects — processing dedicated paths connecting neighborhoods to schools and caller authorities laws, among them — to contiguous short-term wins similar repainting faded crosswalks and replacing missing oregon damaged thoroughfare signs.
Nineteen of the proposals are intended to beryllium enacted oregon initiated by Aug. 10, the commencement of the caller schoolhouse year. They see improving postulation information acquisition efforts successful schoolhouse communities, allowing principals to petition crosswalk flashers beryllium re-timed and expanding postulation enforcement serviceman beingness astir schools.
The study was prepared by the School Traffic Safety Working Group, a conjugation of much than 90 education, instrumentality enforcement and postulation experts successful Clark County.
The findings travel an abnormally unsafe twelvemonth for pupil pedestrians. Collisions involving kids accrued to 427 successful the 2025-26 schoolhouse year, up from 120 the schoolhouse twelvemonth prior, according to information compiled by schoolhouse territory police.
School constabulary person antecedently said portion of the summation is owed to stronger information postulation practices among Southern Nevada instrumentality enforcement agencies.
Still, section officials spot country for improvement.
Clark County School District Superintendent Jhone Ebert called the emergence successful pupil pedestrian crashes “a hard and tragic communitywide problem” successful an emailed connection Wednesday. She added that the recommendations volition beryllium discussed Aug. 5 astatine a Clark County School Board enactment session.
“CCSD volition bash everything we tin to amended and promote students, families and assemblage members to enactment down their phones, wage attraction to the road, and travel postulation information laws,” Ebert said.
New laws pitched
Part of the study outlines the request to modernize Nevada’s e-device laws.
Crashes involving e-devices, specified arsenic e-bikes and e-scooters, accounted for astir fractional of each pupil collisions, the study said.
Yet authorities laws governing e-devices are not keeping up with rapidly evolving proscription technology, according to Andrew Bennett, manager of the Clark County Office of Traffic Safety. He added that a patchwork of ordinances that alteration betwixt jurisdictions constitute Southern Nevada’s e-device regulations.
“We person kids, precise young kids, that are connected motorcycles and their parents mightiness deliberation that they’re connected an e-bike,” Bennett said. “It would beryllium adjuvant having clearer definitions of what these devices are.”
The study recommends 2 caller authorities statutes to intelligibly specify electrical motorcycles and different high-power electrical devices. It adds different ideas to widen DUI and impound authorization to e-bikes and electrical motorcycles.
The study besides calls for a statewide helmet instrumentality tiered by some property and the hazard of the instrumentality a kid is riding. Children nether 11 would beryllium banned from riding e-devices connected nationalist roads, portion older children could thrust assorted e-devices aft earning a authorities information certificate, the study proposes.
“When the pupil is astatine responsibility (in a crash), it mostly had to bash with not yielding the close of mode and not operating the conveyance successful a harmless manner,” Bennett said. “Ensuring that there’s a level-set cognition of rules of the roadworthy would beryllium captious to reducing this fig of kids that are deed connected their mode to oregon from school.”
According to the report, “proposed changes to Nevada’s authorities laws regarding e-devices are successful improvement for the adjacent legislative session.”
Walking schoolhouse buses
One of the much disposable contiguous recommendations that volition deed the Las Vegas Valley streets travel August are walking schoolhouse buses and motorcycle trains.
These programs would alteration groups of students, apt successful simple school, to locomotion oregon motorcycle to field unneurotic nether big supervision, according to Andrew Bennett, manager of the Clark County Office of Traffic Safety.
The thought isn’t wholly caller for Southern Nevada. Three simple schools successful 2019 had walking schoolhouse autobus programs funded done the Nevada Department of Transportation, the Las Vegas Review-Journal antecedently reported.
Walking schoolhouse buses springiness kids information successful numbers and boost their regular carnal enactment levels, according to Sheila Janofsky, who helped unafraid grants for the 2019 walking schoolhouse buses. Plus, she added, kids find it amusive to locomotion to schoolhouse with their friends.
“We spot tragedies each twelvemonth with kids connected their mode to school, truthful the thought of having an escorted ceremonial radical that walks with a trained big is thing that tin truly marque it a batch safer for kids,” said Janofsky, a professor-in-residence astatine UNLV’s School of Public Health.
Anecdotal grounds besides shows that walking schoolhouse buses promote kids to spell to schoolhouse and assistance them merchandise excess vigor truthful they participate the schoolroom acceptable to learn, Janofsky added.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the disappearance of walking schoolhouse buses, Janofsky said, territory concerns astir wounded liability besides played a role.
“I don’t cognize that we ever truly came to a satisfactory solution astir however to hole that peculiar problem,” Janofsky said. “These programs bash tally successfully successful different parts of the state … but that liability contented turned retired to beryllium a large 1 for us.”
A territory spokesperson said successful an email Thursday that the walking schoolhouse autobus programme was paused “for assorted reasons, including a deficiency of capableness from CCSD unit members.”
The programme volition instrumentality successful the 2026-27 schoolhouse twelvemonth nether a caller model, the spokesperson added. Community partners volition beryllium allowed to run walking schoolhouse buses astatine idiosyncratic schools with the district’s cooperation.
Ideas without funding
While the study identifies dozens of ways to amended pupil pedestrian safety, it notes that securing backing for the recommendations is up to section agencies and jurisdictions.
Bennett noted that determination are ways to prevention wealth connected larger recommendations. Incorporating schoolhouse portion information ideas into existing infrastructure betterment projects, for example, could lessen costs, helium said.
The study besides does not outline a process for checking successful connected the advancement of the assorted recommendations. Bennett said helium volition study to the Clark County Commission 30 days aft the commencement of schoolhouse to sermon advancement connected implementing the moving group’s recommendations.
The schoolhouse territory volition implicit oregon commence each of the report’s contiguous recommendations by Aug. 10 due to the fact that they each physique connected existent territory enactment and programs, according to a territory spokesperson. Longer-term ideas, however, whitethorn necessitate further backing and resources, they added.
“CCSD enactment volition enactment internally and externally to find what investments we tin undertake,” the spokesperson said successful an email.
The territory volition besides fortify its postulation information acquisition efforts successful the 2026-27 schoolhouse twelvemonth done expanded postulation information lessons and a caller programme that lets precocious schoolers make and instrumentality peer-led information initiatives, the spokesperson added.
Jeff Clark, the recently named main of schoolhouse territory police, antecedently said helium supported the report’s recommendations to summation schoolhouse postulation enforcement, behaviour an intensive back-to-school postulation run and heighten coordination with different instrumentality enforcement agencies.
A territory spokesperson said that schoolhouse constabulary are moving with different instrumentality enforcement agencies to make plans for greater postulation enforcement successful schoolhouse zones astatine nary outgo to the district’s budget.
Individual charter schools are liable for implementing the report’s recommendations, according to Melissa Mackedon, enforcement manager of the Nevada State Public Charter School Authority.
After Bennett presented the study to the Commission, Chair Michael Naft stressed the value of accountability successful ensuring the recommendations go reality.
“Come backmost and amusement maine however galore crosswalks we’ve painted during summertime, however galore signs person we fixed oregon replaced, what schools we’ve audited,” Naft said during the Tuesday meeting. “All of that information should beryllium available, and we person to clasp radical accountable to bring it backmost to us.”
Contact Spencer Levering astatine slevering@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-383-0253.
English (US)·