As 🎉a New York City elementary-school principal, I worry about each and every one of my 350 beautiful “babies” (as I aff🥃ectionately refer to all PS 124 students, no matter their age) getting there safe. Every day as kids enter our wonderful and welcoming school, they walk past a speed camera posted right in front of the school’s front door that opens onto busy 4th Avenue. With that camera, the odds of each of them coming through that door safe and sound are much higher.
It was not always so.
A year before I began as principal, two PS 124 5th graders and best friends, Juan Angel Estrada and Victor Flores, were st🦩ruck by a truck driver making a quick, inattentive turn from 9th Street while they were walking home fro🌟m scho꧒ol. They were killed instantly.
Ever since the deaths of Juan and Victor, our school has made street-safety awareness a central part of what we teach every student. Especia🐽lly for older children who have permission to walk without a parent or guardian, the Vision Zero “Cross This Way” curriculum has helped us — teaching our children the safe way to be a defensive pedestrian.
However, the burdꦿen for safety cannot be solely on our kids, and our school has also been blessed with a series of changes outside of the school’s walls since that tragic day that have made the school’s neighborhood much safer. Among those changes, a speꦅed hump was added on a side street and Fourth Avenue was narrowed from six lanes to four, making crossings shorter.
After Vision Zero started in 2014, the speed limit along 4th Avenue was lowere💖d from 30 to 25 MPH. The traffic lights were synced so cars would move at the new safer speed limit. Pedestrian head starts also now give families a few extra seconds to cross before cars are allowed to make the turn.
But the most noticeable chan🎶ge came with the speed cameꦇras.
The numbers speak for themselves. According to the DOT, the two cameras along 4th Avenue in front of my school issued a combined 243 summonses in their first month (foꦫr vehicles going 36 MPH or faster). This past December, they issued 54 tickeꦫts — an almost 80 percent decline in speeding during school hours.
Plus, teachers whos♌e classrooms face 4th Avenue have told me that without the constant loud roar of fast traffic ouꦕtside their windows, much more learning gets done inside quieter classrooms.
I was shocked to learn recently 𝓡that my school is one of only 140 in the entire city to have speed cameras. Despite the fact that the averag🍒e decline in speeding at these schools has been 63 percent, some people have actually claimed that the program is somehow about revenue and not safety. In fact, to me, only one word accurately describes the fact that only 7 percent of city schools have these life-saving devices: travesty.
Albany is right now debating the reauthorization and expansion of the speed-camera law as this legislative session draws to a close. This should be very simple. Despite declinin𓆉g traffic fatalities the last few yeaꦕrs, the dangers remain very real. In fact, kids from my school are still crossing 9th Street every day, including just a few blocks away at the intersection of 5th Avenue, where Abigail Blumenstein and Joshua Lew tragically lost their lives in March.
While we instill in our students the ex෴tra care they must take in crossing wide streets like 9th Street, cars there routinely exceed the speed limit. But under the current speed-camera law, no cameras can actually be located on 9th Street because it is too far from my school, or any other.
Under the expansion being considered, 9th Street and many others would finally get cameras. Juan and Victor lived on꧃ that street and were only 10 and 11 when they lost their lives. Each day, our students play in a ♚playground dedicated to these boys. It breaks my heart to think that their parents might today be celebrating the achievements of recent college graduates.
In their memory, and for all the kids who have lost their lives in n🍷eedless traffic crashes, we must renew and strengthen the speed-camera law.
Annabell Burrell has been the principal of PS 124, which serves South Park Slope and Gowanus, since 2005.