- April 26, 2024
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A group of children and adults strolled along Red Mill Drive near Rymfire Elementary one morning, participating in a national initiative to encourage students to walk to school. Then one of the adults, Principal Paula St. Francis, got a terrible phone call.
It was Oct. 7, 2015. School Board member Andy Dance remembers it clearly because he was also walking with the group, and he saw the look on St. Francis’ face.
The caller said a child across town in Palm Coast had been hit by a car that morning. Kymora Christian was pronounced dead at the hospital. She was 7 years old.
The community responded with a petition for safer streets, signed by more than 1,000 people on change.org. Bus stop safety became the subject of several government meetings, and Dance represented the School Board on an ad hoc committee that was formed to look for solutions.
Among the changes that resulted were cement pads at some bus stops to encourage students to stand in safe places away from the intersections. Lighting was added to some bus stops, and some routes were adjusted.
But did that make the streets safe enough for students?
Dance grew up in Flagler County. His parents owned a garden center and were part of the Historical Society. His father, George, was president of the Cattleman’s Association and helped lead the Flagler County Fair. His mother, Nancy, was elected to the School Board in the 1980s and 1990s, and Dance remembers her as thoughtful and conscientious, a deliberate decision-maker, a good communicator.
On election nights in those days, Andy Dance recalls going to the old courthouse in downtown Bunnell to support his mother. The voting results were written in chalk on a blackboard. As they were updated, someone would erase the numbers and write the new ones.
“The suspense was very exciting,” Dance recalled.
After high school, he earned a degree in landscape architecture, and he moved to Jacksonville to work. He visited his parents in Palm Coast often, and, one day, he went to one of his mother’s School Board meetings.
The meetings were held at what is now the Flagler Technical Institute, a small building just west of the Flagler Auditorium on the Flagler Palm Coast High School campus. The room was full, and it was a contentious meeting. He remembers her being very professional as he watched her from the audience.
Both of his parents, Dance recalled, set a good example. From them, he learned this lesson: “If we want to make where we’re living better, we have to step up and participate in that process.”
With his wife, Luci, and their three children, Dance moved back to Palm Coast full time in 2002. In 2008, all three of those children — Kayla, Sarah and Drew — were in elementary school. A special election was held for the School Board that year to finish the remaining two years of the retiring Dr. Jim Guines’ term, and Dance decided to run and be a voice for parents in school decisions. His wife was supportive, and the whole family often joined him on campaign stops.
Dance won that year. He was unopposed in 2010, won again in 2014, and was unopposed again in 2018.
When he ran for School Board, he did not intend to eventually be chairman of the Community Traffic Safety Team, but that’s what he has done since May 2017. The CTST is run by the Florida Department of Transportation, and according to Chad Lingenfelter, safety specialist for FDOT District 5, there are 10 CTSTs in his nine counties. Typically, they are led by law enforcement (Michael Van Buren, of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, led Flagler’s CTST before he retired in 2016). Having Dance, a school board member, as chairman is unique, Lingenfelter said.
Every month, Dance leads the CTST meeting — coincidentally, in the same room of the FTI building where School Board meetings used to be held while his mother was on the board.
In March 2017, a 16-year-old Matanzas High School student, Michelle Taylor, was struck by a car and killed on Lakeview Boulevard as she walked along the road.
That same year, the River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization funded safety studies of each of Flagler County’s public elementary schools (Bunnell, Old Kings, Rymfire, Wadsworth and Belle Terre) and the public middle schools (Buddy Taylor and Indian Trails).
Flagler was late to the table. The TPO had already funded studies for all 65 of the schools that existed at the time in Volusia County between 2005 and 2011, but Flagler didn’t become part of the TPO until 2014, according to Stephan Harris, transportation planner/project manager for the TPO.
The recommendations from the studies included general strategies for improving car rider lines and encouraging more students to walk to school. But Dance noted that the studies didn’t address site-specific issues. He had expertise he thought would help: As a landscape architect, he had designed sidewalks.
So, with the encouragement of Karissa Moffett, the Safe Routes to School coordinator for the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida, and with the permission of Superintendent James Tager, he decided to conduct a “walking audit” of each school. Wadsworth Elementary Principal Anna Crawford volunteered to host him for the first one.
In Harris’ experience, this was also unique. In the TPO’s 72 school safety studies, staff would ried buses and make observations. He had never heard of a school board member actually walking the routes until Andy Dance did.
As Dance walked with Moffett, they took notes and pictures, tagging locations with GPS markers on a map.
Dance noted low-hanging tree limbs that should be addressed. He noted uneven spots in sidewalks, and even where parts of the sidewalk were discolored. If a sidewalk was darker than it should be, it was an indication of being stained by the soil, and that meant murky water had been pooling up on the sidewalk after rains. In some places, he saw evidence of algae on the sidewalk, and that meant the water had remained for quite a while. If a sidewalk floods, students have to walk around it, possibly into the road.
Dance presented his findings from that first walking audit to city of Palm Coast Senior Planner Jose Papa. As a result, the city has restriped crosswalks, removed limbs, repaired sidewalks. Combine that with the work of Dance and others on the ad hoc committee in 2015, and it was clear that safety was improving.
But, so far, the only walking audit had been at Wadsworth Elementary School. Dance also did an audit at Rymfire and another at Matanzas High School (although he admits that he used a golf cart at Matanzas, in the heat of the summer), but things stalled after Moffett got a new job in October, and the reports were never compiled.
In the meantime, however, the city of Palm Coast has been working on other safety measures. Multiuse pathways have been added along all major roadways, and “anything near a school is a top priority,” according to Palm Coast Communications Manager Cindi Lane.
The spot where Michelle Taylor died is completely dark at night, but on Feb. 22, Florida Power and Light will begin installing streetlights on Lakeview Boulevard, which is the portion of Belle Terre Parkway north of Matanzas Woods Parkway. Soon thereafter, Belle Terre will get streetlights from Palm Coast Parkway south to Pine Lakes.
Lane also pointed out, however, that the lighting issue is complicated. According to a recent survey whose 2,000 responses are still being analyzed, many residents say they want more lights on streets. But others say they want the streets to stay dark so that the stars will still be visible in the sky. The City Council approved in November a master plan for continuous streetlighting.
Dance was all smiles at the Feb. 12, 2019, meeting of the CTST. In previous CTST meetings, Dance had brought doughnuts, but he stopped because he usually had too many leftovers to take home, he joked. Today, at the FTI building, attendance was up. There were representatives from the city of Palm Coast, Flagler County, the TPO, FDOT, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, several schools and other organizations. Someday, he hopes there will also be input from residents, as well as Bunnell and Flagler Beach.
There were presentations about the drop-off pattern at Rymfire Elementary School, turn lanes near Walmart, an update on roundabouts, and other agenda items. After the meeting, Dance stayed in the room. He had yet another meeting, this time with Valerie Feinberg, the woman who is now filling the Safe Routes to School role vacated in October by Moffett.
Now, Dance plans to continue with the walking audits. He’ll finish the reports and present them to the city to address immediate and simple concerns that can be addressed to make it safer for kids. And he plans to get help.
The TPO accepts grant applications every year for Safe Routes to School, the program whose guidelines Dance and others were following as they walked to school in October 2015. This year, Harris said, the TPO has received about 36 grant requests, and they’ve all come from Volusia County — none from Flagler. Dance hopes to change that and make some requests in time for the March 29 deadline.
There are big challenges ahead. Limbs and sidewalk cracks are easy, but what about the fundamental problem of limited walking space on Palm Coast’s neighborhood streets? The developer of the city designed inexpensive grassy ditches called swales that are effective for stormwater purposes but not as effective for walking safety. Lane estimated it would cost $1 billion to replace the swales.
As a result, walkability may always be an issue.
“There’s a level of frustration with the lack of infrastructure,” Dance said on Feb. 12. “It’s a complex problem.”
Still, Dance is on a mission. “I think we have to look at some more innovative solutions to look at how to help those in walking zones,” he said.
After the CTST meeting, he reflected on Kymora’s death in 2015. Her memorial service, which he attended. The concern of the community.
“We don’t want to lose any of the students,” he said. “We don’t want them to get injured. Something like that happens, and you want to find out why, and you want to find out ways to alleviate that to best of your ability.”
