At the end of the last school year we were happy to announce that the City had agreed to reinforce the safety and security aspects around the school. The heavy traffic on Drève Ste-Anne threatens the safety of children and parents who come to the school by foot or bicycle. But it also affects parents bringing or picking up their children by car. Speed and ‘wild’ parking are the predominant reason for these safety issues around the school.
To that extent, the School and the APEEE met with the City in order to implement measures to remediate to this. The most significant measures that the City agreed to achieve, were:
Enlarging the existing zebra crossing, creating a new zebra crossing in front of ‘La Cantina’ down the road, surrounding these zebra crossing with poles and/or fences to hinder any ‘wild’ parking in that area, adding poles and/or fences on the pedestrian sidewalk (including the STIB bus station) alongside the school, adding more visible speed limit signs (30km zone), adding signs on the road surface, increasing police controls regarding speed limit, placing a no-parking zone in front of the bus gate in order to facilitate the entry of the busses and a no-parking zone in front of the school bus exit on Rue Medori.
All these measures, that were agreed on and were part of a wider plan to increase the safety around the school, have unfortunately not yet been put in place despite the promises we received from the City. The APEEE is therefore currently again in contact with the City to obtain a clear schedule as to when these necessary and most important improvements will be done.
Nevertheless, we would also like to take this opportunity to stress again how important it is that all parents, coming by car, do respect pedestrians and cyclists. This means that it is not acceptable that cars are repeatedly parked on the zebra crossing, on the bus station zones or on the pavements without respecting a minimum of passage for pedestrians. The school has also confirmed that no parent has been granted a derogation to wild park in front of the gates. If you need access – contact the school and make the appropriate arrangements to have access to the car park.
Regarding the entry and exit of the car parking, the school has made an extra effort to enhance the safe passage by placing one guard at the entry/exit. This helps pedestrians and cyclist to better cross these zones.
A word on internal safety measures: The school has finalised all emergency drills for all buildings, including the canteen. The result has been validated by the security responsible though the evacuation of the canteen does still suffer from the ‘difficult’ architecture of the building. Nevertheless, the drill has been successful and all plans are now in place.
The school is also finalising its ‘internal emergency plan’, to ensure a full and autonomous functioning and control of the school in the event of high emergency situations. We will of course keep you updated on the finalisation of this plan in due time.
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