In 34 days, USD 257 voters will head to the polls to decide whether to approve construction of a new elementary school, most likely just off Kentucky Street in East Iola.
That leads to a question from Iolan Randy Rasa for this week’s Ask The Register: If the school is approved, will the city commit to extending either the Missouri Pacific Trail or Katy Trail corridor, and implement other safety measures, such as sidewalks and crosswalks?
The thought surrounding the question involves walkability ? getting kids to school without using four-wheeled transportation.
While a new school is farther away from Iola?s downtown hub as either Lincoln or Jefferson elementary schools are, it would carry one advantage over the current system: the new facility would be all-inclusive.
For decades, all three of Iola?s grade schools were traditional neighborhood schools.
That changed in 2015, when USD 257 converted each to attendance centers: all kindergartners now attend McKinley Elementary School, they move to Jefferson for first and second grade and finally to Lincoln for third and fourth grade. (Fifth-graders, meanwhile, are taught at Iola Middle School.)
One of the byproducts of shifting to attendance centers ? at least anecdotally ? is that fewer youngsters are walking to school. Parents are less apt to send their kids out their front doors if one sibling must head north to Lincoln, while the other traverses to another school several blocks way on his own.
That issue would be answered in an all-inclusive elementary school.
As to safety measures, both City Administrator Sid Fleming and Assistant City Administrator Corey Schinstock said crosswalks over Kentucky Street are a virtual certainty.
Iola would be required to work with the Kansas Department of Transportation to add crosswalks over U.S. 54, Fleming added, because it?s a federal highway.
Schinstock also envisioned a flashing light or other traffic signal ? perhaps similar to the Prairie Spirit Trail?s crossing along North State Street ? somewhere near the proposed school site.
Iola City Council members were intrigued, but noncommital, when asked about extending the Missouri Pacific trail through East Iola if voters approve construction of a new elementary school. The above map shows another possible route (along an undeveloped Benton Street corridor) the extension could follow. Image courtesy of GOOGLE MAPS
