Dear Parent/Carer,

As you may know, we have ongoing and long standing issues in the school car park, particularly first thing in the morning. Many parents/carers elect to stop in the middle of the car park to drop pupils off. This happens at the entrance and exit, and is an issue caused by a minority of parents from both St. Joseph’s Academy and St. Andrew’s Primary. Despite reminders over the years, the issue persists. While teaching staff cannot be reasonably expected to work as car park attendants, we do appreciate that our responsibility extends to raising awareness and trying to offer solutions. With this in mind, we propose a one week trial starting tomorrow (Friday 11^th September).

Upon entrance to the car park, parents/carers have the following options:

• Take an immediate right turn, find a parking space and park your car before allowing pupils to exit vehicles
• Drive the length of the car park to the overspill car park beside the astro turf pitch, find a space and park your car before allowing pupils to exit vehicles
• Use what are normally car park spaces to the immediate left as a drop off area

The entire row of car parking spaces on the immediate left will not be used by school staff. This creates a drop off zone that runs for the length of the car park and would operate in a similar way to drop off areas at airports. For the duration of the trial, school staff and our campus officer will be in the car park area from around 8.35am to direct traffic. Please remember that the drop off zone will extend to the entire length of the car park, and as such parents/carers should drive along as far as they can before pulling into the drop off area. This will ensure that traffic flows appropriately.

In addition, we feel it prudent to remind everyone of the fact that we have several zebra crossings throughout the car park, and drivers should continue to take care when moving off after having dropped a young person off. We also note that some of the congestion is caused by the natural delay that parking and manoeuvring can bring, and see no obvious solution to that particular issue. While we do not believe that a drop off zone will eliminate congestion completely, we do hope that it will help. We will review this matter at the end of next week.

Kind Regards

Mrs Murray (HT St. Andrew’s) and Mr Kane (HT St. Joseph’s)