At P.S. 307, progress on traffic safety is slow, but speed bumps are now in place

Outside the Luisa Pineiro Fuentes School of Science and Discovery (P.S. 307) on Eames Place stand two speed bumps that did not exist a few months ago: one on a side street and one not far from the entrance, where students exit and enter the building each day.

Authorities have also placed a crossing guard outside the school. 

For advocates who have pushed for traffic safety measures since 8-year-old Rylee Ramos died outside the school on Oct. 24, it is a mark of slow progress.

“From our point of view, we just obviously want to be supportive of all the measures,” said Caroline Samponaro, the deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, a group that pushes for traffic safety improvement measures. “We’re trying to make a larger point, that ideally we can make these sorts of improvements standard, that they aren’t just a reaction to preventable loss.”

The third-grade student was killed after a 55-year-old woman reversed her car down Claflin Avenue onto the sidewalk outside the school, striking a group of 10 pedestrians, including Rylee and her mother.

After the incident, volunteers from the neighborhood came together to advocate for improved traffic safety around the school, compensating for what they saw as a lack of reaction from the departments of education and transportation.

Each day since the accident, Roberto Northover, who lives in the neighborhood, has directed traffic as a volunteer outside the school, in the absence of a permanent crossing guard. Until recently, he placed a barrier at the intersection of Eames Place and Webb Avenue to prevent all non-school bus traffic from passing in front of the school during drop off and dismissal times.

Now, because of a sprained knee, he places orange cones instead of a metal barricade. But he has stood steady by his post.

“When you commit yourself to something, never give up,” Mr. Northover, 60, said at dismissal time on Feb. 5.

The speed bumps are a start, he said, part of a DOT traffic study currently being conducted outside the area.