San Benito High School students have to face traffic and hustle
to get to class on time
Hollister – Carrying a stack of heavy books Tuesday morning, Freshman Maura Paxton was racing the clock to get from the new side of campus to her next class on the main side.
“It’s really annoying,” she said about running across campus at San Benito High School. “It’s hard because I have a lot of books for those classes (on the new side of campus) and my locker is way over in Baler Alley.”
Paxton is one of many SBHS students who say they’re having a difficult time making the trip across Nash Road to the new side of campus at the corner of West Street.
“I was late to class the other day, and my teacher was upset,” student Wally Alam said.
Because of the long trek for students, SBHS has extended the time between classes from eight minutes to 10 minutes and coordinated the breaks between classes with brunch and lunch. Superintendent Jean Burns Slater said students have ample time to get to class.
Even if the students can get across campus in 10 minutes, they still have to stop at Nash Road and wait for the OK from campus supervisors to cross. That can take several minutes, and campus supervisor Laura Russell said angry drivers and the hoards of students needing to cross is an “accident waiting to happen.”
“We hear a lot of the students complain about how they’re going to be late to class, but the students are pretty good about crossing,” she said. “It’s the cars I’m worried about.”
When it’s time for students to cross, campus supervisors at both crosswalk corners communicate over a radio, and give hand gestures letting each other know it’s safe for students to cross, Russell said. When the two supervisors walk to the middle of the crosswalks blocking auto traffic, masses of students are allowed to cross Nash Road anywhere between the two. Some drivers have been getting angry with the supervisors because they can’t see students crossing, according to Russell.
“People have been calling us foul names,” she said. “They don’t understand that even if there are no students crossing at West, that supervisor has to coordinate with the one at Monterey because somewhere between those two blocks there is a student crossing.”
Russell said SBHS has been trying to do everything it can to keep students safe without closing the street, but the attempts are going unnoticed by drivers. One of the safety precautions, rumble strips, which are bumps in the road forcing drivers to slow down, are actually making things more dangerous, according to Russell.
“Now the cars are swerving around the bumps and are going into the other lane to get around them,” she said. “Safety wise, nobody has died there, so it makes me feel like nothing will get done unless someone does.”
The school has been trying to get the City of Hollister to close off the road for years, but City Manager Clint Quilter said the closure can’t happen until the extension of Westside Boulevard is complete, and there is no confirmed end of the project in sight.
Through reports and studies, Slater said the city and the school have found that more than 50 percent of the drivers that go through that part of Nash Road aren’t local residents. Commuters who come into Hollister from San Juan Bautista and Highway 156, are making a right on Westside Boulevard off of eastbound San Juan-Hollister Road, and then a left on Nash Road, which has them driving through the high school campuses, and lets them bypass the downtown city traffic, Slater said. Once Westside Boulevard is complete, it will connect to Union Road, which will allow SBHS to close the block of Nash Road that it needs to because drivers will have an alternative route, and there will be less congestion. Until the boulevard is complete, Slater said the school will continue to proactively work with the city, and she wants community members to continue to be patient when students are crossing.
“We all have to step back and think ‘what does it cost to be three minutes late?'” she said.
