Monday, Aug. 29, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.
With the start of the school year today, the walk to Eileen Conners Elementary School in northwest Las Vegas will be shorter and safer for many students.
They will be able to use a new foot bridge to cross over a stormwater drainage canal that until today had forced about 300 students to take a long way around it -- or a risky short cut.
The Eileen Conners Elementary School is at one end of Shadow Peak Street, just off Alexander Road near the Las Vegas Beltway. One side of the year-old school is along a fenced drainage channel that cuts Shadow Peak in two, and forced many children to take a long way around the channel.
Some students, instead, chose to climb the fences, and then the ladders to get across the open channel.
Karen Irving, whose daughter is a fifth grader at Conners, said she would often see children climbing over the fence and across the channel.
"One time a boy got stuck on the fence and someone else cut himself on the fence, and I've seen kids playing in the wash," said Irving, who was among the more vocal parents in asking the city to do something about the apparent safety problem.
The city paid about $79,000 for the bridge, which is 38-feet long and 6-feet wide.
Irving said the bridge will cut her daughter's walk to school in half to about 10 minutes, "but it's not really about the time or the distance, it's just so much safer."
School Principal Patti Blomstrom said in addition to being a safer route for children, the shorter walk could also encourage more parents to let their children walk to school instead of driving them, reducing traffic congestion around the school.
A city statement on the new bridge said the bridge means some students' walks to school will be cut from almost two miles to just a few hundred yards.
As of Thursday, Conners was expected to open with about 680 students, and only 50 to 70 will be eligible for school bus rides to the front door.
Blomstrom estimated as many as 300 of her students live on the other side of the channel and said 175 to 200 students might use the new bridge each day.
On the other side of the bridge sits a quiet neighborhood that is just a few years old itself. Vincent Zamora stands to be the resident most immediately affected by the new bridge because his home is closest to it.
"I believe it is the perfect solution for those kids and parents," Zamora said. "I saw kids jumping the fence and down in the wash. One day we found a bike down in the culvert."
But Zamora worries that the bridge could become a busy pedestrian thoroughfare for the neighborhood and place for the students to hang around after school.
"I fully support the bridge, but I want limited access," he said. "Maybe they should have school police lock it up after school hours, put a nice-looking gate on it."
Councilman Larry Brown, who is credited with helping make sure the bridge would be built, said the need for the bridge "became obvious last year."
"There was a safe route to the school," Brown said, referring to the longer walk that takes students down to Hualapai Way, which the drainage channel passes underneath. "But kids were still going through the channel. So we knew we had to do something."
Brown also said city officials will pay attention to the effect on Zamora and other neighbors.
"We'll certainly look at that, and fencing and screening to help with privacy," Brown said. But Brown also said that the bridge will provide easier access for residents to get to the hiking trails around nearby Lone Mountain.
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