Orange County community fed up with after-school dismissal: ‘A nightmare’
WINTER GARDEN, Fla. - Residents in a Winter Garden community are dealing with high-volume traffic during school arrivals and dismissals.
The Lakeshore Preserve community is wedged between two schools that opened within the last few years: Horizon High School and Panther Lake Elementary School.
Residents say parents drop off, pick up, and sometimes double park in their neighborhood to avoid school car lines. They also say students park their cars in front of their homes instead of parking in the school lot.
"The issue is parking, traffic, and not being able to get in and out of our community. It’s really a nightmare," said resident Maureen Jannetta.
"It also creates unsafe driving conditions. I had an incident with my 2-year-old where we almost got hit by a student driver rushing to get to class. I had incidents of parents yelling at me who are double or triple parked, and there’s traffic," added another resident, Aimee Martel.
The parking and high-volume traffic are happening on Bismarck Palm Drive, which is a public road in Winter Garden located inside the Lakeshore Preserve Community.
While FOX 35 Orlando was at the school dismissal, we saw that while it was very congested, almost all of the parents were following the rules of the road. Some Panther Lake parents told FOX 35 they don’t think this is an issue, as they’re parking on a public roadway.
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"You park the cars legally, you walk over, pick up your kids and go home. It’s a temporary thing that’s going to last maybe 20 minutes of their day, so I don’t understand why everyone’s complaining about everything," said a Panther Lake Elementary parent.
FOX 35 reached out to a spokesperson with Orange County Public Schools who said the district has been working closely with the neighborhood to reduce the impact of arrival and dismissal traffic and went on to say in a statement in part:
"Our schools work hard to be good community partners and are proactive about reducing impact to the surrounding neighborhoods," said the OCPS Spokesperson.
An Orange County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told FOX 35 Orlando that they know what’s occurring and that deputies have conducted multiple details to try to alleviate the problems.
Residents would like the high school to add parking spaces and hope the elementary school can adjust its dismissal procedure to help alleviate their issues. However, some residents simply have enough and are moving to another area of the community.
"We’ve been dealing with this for two years. What other option do I have other than to move at this point?" said resident Chad Lee. "We moved into this neighborhood, and we have some right to some privacy, quiet, and safety."