David,

Greetings from 645 Woodland Hills W.

I wanted to mention a couple of things that would be of interest to you as President of the Woodland Hills Civic Assoc.

In addition to being a neighborhood resident and member of the Association, I am also the Chairman of the Seven Oaks Elementary School Improvement Council. We have had meetings for the last couple of months regarding some traffic and safety issues related to our end-of-school car pool line pickup procedures.

First, I'll mention something that you may already be aware of. Lexington County is going to be building a sidewalk running the length of Eastlawn Dr. This is the street that leads from Seven Oaks school back into the Woodland Hills neighborhood. This is something that the school has urged the county to do for several years. Children who live in our neighborhood and walk to and from school must walk on streets that currently do not have sidewalks. This is a problem!! To add to the safety risk, the end-of-school pickup line stretches down Eastlawn, which means the children walk down the side of the street immediately beside the entire line of cars. Not Good!! The county recently surveyed the street and is planning to begin construction as soon as this school year is over - around June.

Second, the school improvement council has been discussing the need to build a new car pool / pickup loop. Currently, the loop runs through the Eastlawn side parking lot and is certainly not long enough to get cars off of the street. We are writing a proposal to the school district office for a capital expenditure to build a new car pool loop that would wrap around the playground and approach the school on the back side. This would allow for a much longer car pool loop and get most of the cars off of the street. I need your help with this proposal. We would like to ask residents in the neighborhood to sign a letter reinforcing the need for a better solution to the car pool traffic problems. I will draft the letter and would like a moment to discuss this issue at the next association meeting. At that time, I will ask that parents sign the letter. Also, if there is a newsletter that will be sent out anytime soon, I feel we should mention this so that people are aware of our intent.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Richard Lagroon
645 Woodland Hills W.
750-8831