School traffic flow to adjust as needed

Parents should expect constant changes in the traffic flow at Creston schools for the next few months as construction crews work to build the new Early Childhood Center on Academic Avenue, according to the Creston School Board at their Aug. 19 meeting.

The project was initially scheduled to start in July, but Creston Superintendent Deron Stender said there were numerous setbacks.

“We have no choice in this, we have no choice in the timeline,” Stender said. “I don’t know the last time you’ve had a contractor that has kept their commitment to the timeline that they’ve given you, but I’ve learned that any time there’s construction, everything is 30 to 90 days past whatever deadline they say.”

Now that construction has started, Stender expects the process to take 90 days. Throughout this time, the school plans to adjust traffic flow as needed.

“We’ll be quick to make adjustments. We’re not afraid of that,” Stender said. “In administration, we always want to be right. Well, these are things we don’t know until we do it, and then once we do it we make the adjustments with the information that we have.”

For now, information shared on social media by the school district Aug. 16 remains the same. This includes entering only through Townline at Creston High School and exiting only through North Lincoln Street for parent pickup/drop-off. This will be a single-lane pathway only. In order to help with traffic flow, the high school had changed its start and end times by 10 minutes, now starting at 8:20 a.m. and ending at 3:05 p.m. This time will be taken out of the school’s seminar.

Additionally, the gravel lot behind the high school where many students park will now be off-limits to students.

“There’s a lot of space, and it’s kind of a good thing, because I’ve been asking Mr. Messerole for two to three years, for safety purposes and security, having one less parking lot that we have to monitor and adjust to and have traffic flow out of,” Stender said. Parents can now use that lot to wait in line for pickup/drop-off.

Stender acknowleged the situation isn’t ideal, but said the district is doing their best. While traffic flow disruptions are planned to end in November, construction on the entire facility addition will continue into 2025, with school move in anticipated in August.