Orchard Hills Community TUSD Side - Please Enroll Kids

[Irvine Dream]

Thank you to everyone that assisted to expand Orchard Hills School:

Last evening, the TUSD Board of Education voted unanimously to expand Orchard Hills School to a K-8 environment beginning in the 2018-19 school year. 

MMmmn, how will this affect Orchard Hills Traffic/Paris's driving?

I know with Pioneer with only grades 6-8 it was horrendous traffic just not for the parents dropping kids at school but also for neighbors who were trying to get to work.

 

[Goriot]

Thank you to everyone that assisted to expand Orchard Hills School:

Last evening, the TUSD Board of Education voted unanimously to expand Orchard Hills School to a K-8 environment beginning in the 2018-19 school year. 

MMmmn, how will this affect Orchard Hills Traffic/Paris's driving?

I know with Pioneer with only grades 6-8 it was horrendous traffic just not for the parents dropping kids at school but also for neighbors who were trying to get to work.

TUSD said it won't impact the existing traffic that much or it might actually decrease the traffic because of the following:

1.  Overall student counts aren't incrementally being added to existing total enrollment as they are moving bunch of other students primarily moving 5th graders to different schools near their home.  They are only providing a limited allotment to attend OH for people outside of the OH zone.
2.  Many of the students in K-4 will be walking with their mommy and daddy to school from the Groves and nearby area including me=).

 

[Paris167]

Thank you to everyone that assisted to expand Orchard Hills School:

Last evening, the TUSD Board of Education voted unanimously to expand Orchard Hills School to a K-8 environment beginning in the 2018-19 school year. 

MMmmn, how will this affect Orchard Hills Traffic/Paris's driving?

I know with Pioneer with only grades 6-8 it was horrendous traffic just not for the parents dropping kids at school but also for neighbors who were trying to get to work.

It won?t affect my driving at all. I don?t go anywhere near there during school drop off and pick up. But since the number of students are unchanged (they are moving 8 5th grade classes to hicks) and now more students attending are walkable distance to their homes, I predict less traffic. I know I?ll be walking my kids to and from school.

 

[irvine buyer]

Orchard Hills is a very nice setting but the K-8 and the high school present traffic issues that you have to deal with during drop off and pick up times every school day for as long as you live in Orchard Hills.  With a kid at Northwood, all I can say is that I am no longer surprised by how inconsiderate and aggressive a lot of the parents can be.  A security guard has been stationed at the entrance to The Reserve so as to prevent the parents from turning into that community and making an immediate U-turn to enter Wolf Trail.  Being that it is unlikely that the gate will be manned by a guard anytime soon, it'll be interesting to see what happens once that community sells out.  This issue will not go away so long as the high school is there.  More kids at Orchard Hills School means more traffic at drop off and pick up.  I feel bad for the merchants at Orchard Hills center when parents hog up the parking spaces waiting to pick up their child.  I go to the Wells Fargo there and sometimes have to park towards the preschool and walk.  What gets me is that I've seen a few cars that took up two spaces because the driver didn't have the common courtesy to park properly. 

 

[misme]

Orchard Hills is a very nice setting but the K-8 and the high school present traffic issues that you have to deal with during drop off and pick up times every school day for as long as you live in Orchard Hills.  With a kid at Northwood, all I can say is that I am no longer surprised by how inconsiderate and aggressive a lot of the parents can be.  A security guard has been stationed at the entrance to The Reserve so as to prevent the parents from turning into that community and making an immediate U-turn to enter Wolf Trail.  Being that it is unlikely that the gate will be manned by a guard anytime soon, it'll be interesting to see what happens once that community sells out.  This issue will not go away so long as the high school is there.  More kids at Orchard Hills School means more traffic at drop off and pick up.  I feel bad for the merchants at Orchard Hills center when parents hog up the parking spaces waiting to pick up their child.  I go to the Wells Fargo there and sometimes have to park towards the preschool and walk.  What gets me is that I've seen a few cars that took up two spaces because the driver didn't have the common courtesy to park properly.

isn't the traffic jam situation true at any school, due to all the private cars doing pick up and drop off, not just Orchard Hills? I see the line of cars backed up on Jeffrey in the mornings for the drop off at Jeffrey Trail Middle School. 

I've always said it, coming from the East Coast, I found it shocking that there is no real school bus service in Irvine. It would really help cut down on a lot of the surface street traffic from private cars in the mornings and afternoons.

 

[iacrenter]

It comes down to poor planning and design. The school district, TIC planners and city staff should easily anticipate peak traffic flow for these schools. TIC and city planners could have added long swaths of parking cutouts along Culver Drive in front of OH school but that was never done. The parking lot at Settlers Park could have been designed with overflow capacity. TUSD should have better traffic mitigation plans: Optimize staggered start/end times, educate parents about walking your child to school, partner with private bus services, and create incentives for carpooling.

 

[Villager]

It just comes down to accepting the reality of spurts of traffic around schools. This is experienced at every single community with a school. From my experience at Orchard Hills, traffic is not nearly as bad as I had initially expected. You just have to be smart about your driving habits (knowing when to leave, knowing which lanes to drive in, etc.). Plus, the traffic shouldn't be any worse than it is now, as the total number of students will not be increasing significantly from the current amount. And as mentioned earlier, a lot of parents may opt to walk to school with their kids, now that an elementary school is more local.

Some other communities have it way worse. Turtle Rock is almost impossible to exit and enter from Campus for an hour after Uni's dismissal period, mostly because of the amount of student drivers adding to the congestion. In my time at OH, the traffic that comes during the dismissal periods really don't last long.