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Update: Green Lake Elementary playground now fenced

What do you think? (2 Comments) January 27, 2011 at 3:22PM

Last Friday (Jan. 21, 2011), we reported that a student had been hit by a car on Sunnyside Ave N, the street which borders the west side of Green Lake Elementary.

The child had been playing unsupervised in the school’s playground after school.  The playground was unfenced, and the student ran into the street during a game of tag.

You can read more about the incident here.  The story was also picked up by The Stranger’s SLOG, in a post titled “Something’s Terribly Wrong With This Picture” and by the Seattle Public Schools community blog, in a post titled “How Safe Is Your School?”

New fencing has now gone in around the playground:

Author:
Location: East Green Lake
Topics: , , ,
What do you think? (2 Comments)
  • http://www.facebook.com/max.kingsbury Max Kingsbury

    Sweet double post.

  • http://www.facebook.com/max.kingsbury Max Kingsbury

    This seems silly to me. Firstly, it assumes that there is a problem. The child “hit by a car” was uninjured enough that they went to school the next day. It sounds like the safety systems that we have in place worked.

    If you assume that there was a problem, then couldn’t it be solved by more attentive children, parents, and drivers? Do we really want to tell people that the only way their children are safe is if there is a fence between them and the street? What will happen to these children when they need to walk on a sidewalk, or god forbid, cross a street? This is the same approach that puts up bright green pedestrian signs, and asks pedestrians to carry silly flags with them when they walk. The last time I checked, stop signs were just plain old red, but people don’t seem to miss them!