KETTERING — The new school year started for the Kettering City School District on Thursday. It’s one of the Miami Valley’s largest districts.
Thursday also marked the start of the first full year of a program in Kettering aimed at better protecting our kids on their way to and from school.
The News Center 7 I-Team’s lead investigative reporter, John Bedell, spent time in south Montgomery County learning about a partnership between the city and school district.
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As the new school year starts in Kettering, leaders in that community want to reverse the troubling trend they saw last year.
“The end of last year, maybe September, October, we had a string of pedestrian accidents around the schools,” Kettering Police Chief Chip Protsman told the I-Team. “Had some concerns from parents and residents (that) came up. The schools then recognized, ‘hey there’s an issue here.’ The city agreed. So they decided to form this group to see what we could do to decrease this.”
The group is called “Cross Safe, Kettering.” It’s a partnership between the City of Kettering and the Kettering City School District aimed at decreasing pedestrian accidents in and around school zones.
“This is another great example of the collaboration that I think is pretty special in Kettering,” Kettering City School District Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Dan Von Handorf told the I-Team. “We heard some concerns from the community, both the schools and the city (did), and we believe that coming together, working together to try to help solve this problem is a really good thing to do. And so some members of the City of Kettering leadership, the police department, and school district, we meet monthly to try to work at helping educate our students, parents, and community on how to be safe out there.”
The educational aspect of the program involves this video the city and district produced.
Students watch it in school, and it’s published for the community online and on social media. It talks about ways students and drivers can stay safe during the commutes to and from school.
For the Kettering Police Department, there’s an enforcement aspect of the partnership: putting more officers around schools, especially when school zones are active.
Something that could give police across Ohio new enforcement options is a bill from Miami Valley state lawmakers.
House Bill 690 would toughen criminal penalties for drivers who don’t obey traffic orders from crossing guards. That would become a minor misdemeanor. So would harassing, intimidating, or interfering with a crossing guard while they’re performing their official duties.
The bill would also double the fines for those crimes if an offender were in an active school zone during the violation.
“I think that would be a good tool for us to have,” Chief Protsman said. “Anything that we can use to make sure that we’re changing people’s behavior, particularly in those school zones, we’ll take advantage of that.”
Miami Valley State Representatives Andrea White, of Kettering, and Tom Young, from Washington Township, are the primary sponsors of the bill. State Representative Bernie Willis, from Springfield, is the bill’s co-sponsor.
Reps. White and Young introduced the bill at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus earlier this year in direct response to a News Center 7 I-Team investigation.
Our months-long investigation with our sister stations across the country and The Associated Press uncovered hundreds of times crossing guards have been hit by cars while working to keep our kids safe on the way to and from school and uncovered many of the at-fault drivers faced few consequences.
“We appreciate everything you did on this,” State Rep. Young told the I-Team. “It was something that was just laying low. And then (there was) your effort to bring this forward (and) we discovered that it was a major, major issue around the state of Ohio and, as you know, the country.”
Since it was introduced in February, HB 690 has gotten three committee hearings in the Ohio House.
State Representatives White and Young tell the I-Team their goal is to get the bill to Governor DeWine’s office for his signature by the end of the year.
“We have pretty high confidence that there’s support to get it done,” State Rep. White told the I-Team. “One way or the other, it will be done. Either passing it in this bill form or moving it into another bill.”
HB 690 and “Cross Safe, Kettering” are top of mind in Kettering as the new school year starts. The legislative plan and the community effort share the same goal.
“We want our kids to be as safe as they possibly can when going to and from school,” Von Handorf told the I-Team.
State lawmakers are currently on summer break and don’t return until after the November election.
The I-Team will keep tracking the progress of HB 690 at the Statehouse in Columbus and let you know what happens to it between now and the end of the year.
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