Starting January 8th of 2025, Lakota West High School introduced a new set of traffic rules to “improve safety during arrival and dismissal for our students.” Even within just the first few days, however, things haven’t gone as smoothly as Lakota might have hoped. Traffic has doubled, changes have been last-minute made to try to resolve the original directions, and students & parents alike have continued to break the new rules like taking a lollipop from a helpless child. 

In September of 2024, a Butler Tech student was hit while walking to Lakota West using the crosswalk between the MidPointe Library and LWHS. This hit also coincided with an accident between Lakota East Freshman and Lakota East High School, pushing East to change their traffic rules and improve the safety of walking students. Numerous other accidents have occurred throughout Lakota in recent years, and it was time for the district to do something about it. 

What Got Changed

Announced in December, Lakota teamed up with the West Chester Police Department and Butler County Engineer’s office to reassess the parking lot situation at West after an “in-depth study of our parking lots during arrival and dismissal.” These changes made almost all exits right-turn only, with the connections between the front two lots cut, as well as the road between the front and back lots being barricaded off. 

These barricades are added during arrival and dismissal, and removed during school and after the parking lot has cleared (typically around 3:25, 10 or so minutes later than previous traffic rules according to many students from both the front and back lots). This has caused students who normally went through one entrance for convenience to re-route, often adding multiple minutes to their commute to school and home.

As students returned from break, traffic was substantially slower, backing roads up to a standstill nearly 10 minutes after school had already been in session. Even a week after these changes were implemented, there is still a “large amount of tardies” from the main office, as Laman declared in one of his morning announcements to students and staff.

Just as traffic has continued to pile up, so have the last-minute changes Lakota has made to their so-called “improved traffic rules.” Lot D, where many parents pick sophomore students up and exit from, has gone from a left OR right turn exit to now ONLY allowing right turns. This has resulted in traffic piling on top of Lot A (the front parking lot closest to the library) and causing a gridlock on West Chester Road. In an email to students and parents on January 10th, Lakota West principal Scott Laman acknowledged the developing problems with the new traffic changes.

“The new traffic patterns went into effect this week at Lakota West…We know there will be frustrations and growing pains through this process as we work to find solutions to a safer parking lot. We are monitoring the new traffic flow to see what changes may need to be made.”

During arrival and dismissal, the West Chester Police Department has been stationed at each entrance and exit, though they haven’t seemed to do anything about the traffic build-up: there has been no directing of traffic when a gridlock occurs, and have done nothing to prevent people from turning a direction they weren’t supposed to. In the original email sent out to parents and students, Laman mentioned that the West Chester Police would be there to “help direct traffic” so I ask the question: When are they actually going to do that?

On Thursday, January 9th, I drove to Lakota West at 3 pm and ended up right outside the entrance to the back lot (often referred to as the band lot where the semi-trucks are located). I spent 20 minutes stuck right outside the school, just 20 feet away from where I needed to be. Why did this happen? The student drop-off and pickup line has been condensed to one elongated line, spanning from one end of the building to the other, preventing any cars from entering the parking lot. Throughout that time, I watched 3 vehicles turn left (when it was a right-turn-only exit) back to back, while a police cruiser sat in the parking lot, watching the entire thing happen. The students and parents of Lakota West have shown no care towards these new rules, and aren’t afraid to break them: If Lakota wants to see change, you can’t just let people continue to do the wrong thing. This has been a recurring problem in the discipline of students at West, ranging from drug use in the bathrooms to skipping out on classes.

The back parking lot, however, has another problem that started long before any traffic rules were changed: The pickup line for parents blocks the exit lane to Lakota Drive West, preventing the back lot from even getting out of campus. Now that there is only one lane to exit thanks to the right-turn-only change, this line is now doubled, meaning there are twice as many cars trying to get into a single lane, which is already being gridlocked by the pickup line that has not moved in 20 minutes. Do you see the problem here? The entrance is blocking the exit, and suddenly traffic is now worse than ever before.

One other issue that has come up is the current Lot A and Lot D exits. Both act as right-turn-only exits, which means two full lots worth of vehicles (imagine the entire front lot) are confined to leaving in one direction. This causes West Chester Road to become heavily congested, with anyone wanting to go east towards Adena and I-75 to find someplace to do a U-turn. This causes detour-esque traffic that isn’t even trying to go that direction in the first place: They are traveling in one direction with the intent to go in the complete opposite direction. 

This traffic is further worsened by the intersection between West Chester Road and Union Centre Boulevard, which is already trying to balance the regular traffic coming and going from I-75 and parents trying to get to Lot D for student pick-up. 

Fixing what Lakota Can’t

While calling someone out for their wrongdoing is easy, you can’t have a good argument without an alternative solution. As a student at West, I by no means have the professional expertise that the Butler County Engineer’s Office might, but how bad could it be for me to lay out a few suggestions of my own?

As someone who parks in the back “band lot,” I will primarily focus on the pick-up line, as well as the entrance and exit to Lot C. I will also cover some possible changes for the teacher parking lot, known as Lot D.

To start, we need to get the pick-up line out of the way. With the current flow of traffic, the back parking lot becomes stuck for nearly 20 minutes before any cars can actually get moving. To give the pick-up and drop-off line more space, it would be relocated to wrap around Lot D, thanks to its two rows of parking spaces with adequate space for parents to wait. This also gets parents out of the street, and into the schools parking lots, making pickup faster and keeping traffic moving. While I was waiting outside West, I saw two dozen too many students walking on the road to find their parents to dodge the atrocious build-up within the back of Lakota West.

Parents could enter from either lot Lot C or Lot D to get their student but would have to take turns getting in line depending on where they entered (see map for clarity). This would effectively remove a large portion of the pick-up line that has blockaded students over in Lot C from exiting. Lot D also has much more room for cars to wait, as compared to the back road of the building, which becomes easily congested for both Lot C parkers and staff in Lot D. All pick-up/drop-off vehicles would wrap around to the exit at Lot D, and would have the option to turn right OR LEFT, as opposed to the current traffic rule which dictates a right-turn-only.

The only possible issue with this could be that staff wouldn’t be able to leave right away, as cars would be putting their parking lot in a wrap-around chokehold. This issue would be prevalent in the afternoons since teachers are supposed to start their days at 7:20 each morning.

Thanks to this change, Lot C would no longer be barricaded into place, causing a gridlock for nearly 20 minutes every day after school.

Speaking of Lot C, the entrance and exit needs to be expanded. Before the traffic changes, there were three lanes: an entrance lane, a left turn lane, and a right turn lane. Should the previously mentioned pick-up and drop-off change be implemented, this could be reverted to that original entrance/left/right layout, as traffic would flow exponentially faster without a build-up of cars trying to get in. Should Lakota not implement that change, the pick-up line would continue to be an issue. To help ease this problem, three lanes would again be implemented. The entrance and right turn lane would stay the same, but a middle lane, known as the parent pick-up/drop-off lane would be introduced to help isolate normal parents from students who are trying to enter the building in the morning and afternoons (emphasis on the morning arrival). This change would allow students trying to park in Lot C to get there much faster, without having to wait for the drop-off/pick-up lane to inch its way forward. 

Thanks to Lot C now having a potentially traffic-free exit, the barricades blocking the road from Lot B (front lot) and Lot C could be removed, helping Lot B clear much faster and giving students more options of which way to exit. If this improved enough, the barricades between Lot A and Lot B could also possibly be removed.

How to fix the exits to Lot A and D is reliant on the changes already mentioned: If Lot C loses most traffic build-up, then Lot B can partially exit through there, allowing Lot A to make a decision between going directly onto Union Centre Blvd or West Chester Rd. The exit to Lot A should remain right-turn-only to prevent any accidents on the crosswalk to MidPointe Library, just as Lot B’s exit should also remain right-turn-only, as it helps prevent accidents on an already busy road. 

What Happens Next

So far, Lakota has only enacted Phase One of their traffic-flow rules. The temporary barricades will be replaced with swing-style gates, and Lot C will notice a concrete wall built along the current pick-up/drop-off line in the back. If this wall is built, traffic will become even WORSE: previous illustrations showed this wall spanning from the moment you enter the parking lot to where the road between the front and the back of the building is located. Should this be installed, any student parking in Lot C will be forced to wait in the pick-up line until they can get past the wall. This would make arrival time practically triple, with every single student in Lot C being forced to join an already gridlocked line spanning onto Lakota Dr. West.

Students have made their voices clear, and the traffic flow has demonstrated more than enough to anyone driving: Something has to change. In a poll conducted by The West Press, which was posted on the Lakota West Class of 2025 Snapchat group story (which can be accessed by any West student who’s joined), students were asked how they felt about the new traffic changes. When asked if the new rules had improved the safety of students, 60 said yes, whereas 157 said no (a 28% to 72% difference). When asked if the new rules had helped with the flow and convenience of traffic, 30 people said yes (17%), and 190 said no (83%).

These rules were meant to “improve safety during arrival and dismissal,” but are killing any flow of traffic in and out of the building. There are going to be more accidents from students walking out to the road to get picked up, than from the actual crosswalk if these lines continue to exist. The longer they let high schoolers sit in a parking lot after school, the more desperate they will get. We are only a few honks away from seeing students breaking through pickup lines, taking wrong turns, and getting someone hurt. Which does the Lakota West Administration value more, getting people home safe, or getting people home before the sun goes down? The safety of students is immensely important, but so is the time it takes to get in and out of the building.

 If they want students to show up on time and not be tardy, then the traffic flow has to improve. It’s not fair to a student who is already 30 minutes away from the building to have to leave 15 minutes before normal to make it thanks to the new traffic rules. A student shouldn’t have to leave their home at 7:10 in the morning to make it to class by 8:10. If Lakota doesn’t change the traffic rules, then their strictness on being tardy also needs to change. If Scott Laman is going to be the pioneer of cracking down on late students, then he should also start cracking down on backed-up roads, inconvenient travel times, and future changes that will only make all of this so much worse. 

Lakota has the power to reinvent our parking lots and make things better for everyone: How can WE be Lakota if WE can’t even address our own problems and continue to hold students to an unachievable standard? How can WE be expected to make it to school on time when the lines stretch half a mile away from the building and traffic is at a standstill? It’s time for these traffic changes to be reconsidered before future changes only take a turn for the worse.