Residents Concerned About Middle School Traffic

The president of Fort Hill Natural Gas is worried about the combination of 1,400 students and a busy highway when the former Easley High School becomes a middle school.

Ken Porter has watched students and traffic come and go at what was once the Easley High School site from the Fort Hill Natural Gas office on Pendleton Street.

“We've had the pleasure of being a good neighbor of the high school for a number of years,” Porter said. “It concerns me that your children will be going in and out of that facility at a young age on that highway.”

Porter graduated from Easley High School in 1974.

“Highway 8 was a dangerous road back then,” Porter said. “That was a number of years ago.”

High schoolers know to be aware of traffic, he said. Middle schoolers may run out without looking. 

“A high school student's mentality and maturity level is much different than a sixth grader,” Porter said. “It concerns me that we're going to have approximately 1,400 students that's going to be dropped off at that facility. They'll be running out and back across that road, even though we do have a drop-off area I know in front of that. But believe me, after working at Fort Hill for 36 years, people don't just drop their children off where they should be dropped off.

“You're going to have 1,400 students that's trying to get in and out of a classroom, in and out of a school that's not properly situated for those numbers,” he continued. “We're going to have large trucks coming in and out of the facility. It's not a good combination. It was bad enough when it was a high school and high school students were there. I'm here tonight because I'm concerned about our students. I don't want to see anything happen to anybody's child. Please, if they do go to just one school, be aware of your surroundings because it's going to be a dangerous situation.

Mayor Larry Bagwell said he'd spoken to the highway department about traffic at the middle school.

“High school students come at different times of the day, so that's completely different from we're going to have in this situation.

He said he'd a DOT official said the department was aware that the school would have 1,400 students being dropped off and picked up each day, rather than 750, as originally planned.

“Basically, he said, 'That's their problem,'” Bagwell said.

Bagwell said the official said he was less concerned about cars stacking up at the middle school during pickup and drop-off times and more concerned about the buses at the school.

“We tend to forget how many buses those grade levels use,” Bagwell said. “He said, 'Larry, you're going to have a mess.'”