The school has drills in place to prepare students for dangerous situations, but when the most dangerous part of our day is driving into the parking lot, it needs to be changed, and fast. Raider Way is a broken down road filled with potholes and is barely big enough for the two lane traffic it endures, causing multiple accidents every week.

Let’s be honest, most students and faculty don’t have off road vehicles, but drivers are expected to drive off the side of the road whenever a bus or large vehicle passes by. Kids who walk to school are at high risk of getting hit by a car when trying to avoid another from the opposite direction. Also, with gaping potholes on the side of the street, drivers are bound to hit one another straight on, which will potentially cause them to swerve into another vehicle causing expensive damages to their car.

With a middle school located next door, it can take up to 20 minutes to finally pull into the school parking lot. Traffic is always backed up with people waiting to turn left and for the string of cars to diminish. Many times, students have the traffic to blame for being late to class, and although not every case is true, it’s very plausible.

During the 2014-15 school year, students created a petition to widen and repave Raider Way. Nearly the entire school signed the petition and excitement for a possible new road was high. Students were soon told, however, that it wasn’t possible to fix the road since it was not the district’s problem. This is rather interesting, because a petition students signed the year before had enough impact to get the name of the road in front of the school changed from Country Road 271 to Raider Way.

Keeping all of this in perspective, why is it okay to ignore the danger of this road, but then grant something as materialistic as changing a street name?

This year, we have to be smarter and more proactive in our precautions to convince the city that our street it worth getting the attention it needs. We need student leaders to attend committee meetings to speak out about the issues the road is causing. We need to figure out who else we should get involved to make the changes required. Our arguments could include thoughts from people who attend Central Leander Church and people living on the opposite side of the road, which would help strengthen our cause.

Most of all, we need to make our demands clear and rational and stand by them to get the results that would create a safer school for everyone.