Howdy Griffins!

As we return from October Break, we want to thank you for continuing to follow our traffic plan! We truly feel that more families are following the traffic plan and engaged in healthy communication with one another than ever before. Your patience is greatly appreciated and is paying off as we are ending both drop-off and pick-up within our expected times and we want to keep this up!

During drop-off, for those of you who are spending more than 20 minutes in the traffic line, we encourage you to experiment with arriving at different times within the window until your wait time is shorter. Many families arrive on campus between 10-13 minutes once entering Jones Maltsberger. We are getting all students in on time, so if there are some families that have longer wait times than this average, it may be due to too many families showing up at the same time creating a jam. For those trying to turn left at the stop light coming south on Redland Road, please queue from another angle (such as first going straight, turning around, and taking a right) as the red light allows the other directions to continue moving and only allows minimal cars in at a time.

Below are a few adjustments we want to make to our dismissal considering feedback received from families in the first quarter.

• No left turn into our lots between 7:10 – 7:15 am for ANYONE. Right turns into our lot will continue to open at 7:10 am. We used to keep this left turn window open for faculty to continue to arrive until 7:15, but due to heavy usage it has now resulted in vehicles backing up to Autry Pond, and so when we switch from faculty only before 7:10 to letting vehicles into the lot at 7:10, officers will now immediately close the left turn lane. This should only impact a small number of vehicles that were arriving extra early.

• The Red Wave Time in both lots is now 3:25 pm (this is five minutes earlier)! At Lower School, our afternoon orange wave time is running very smoothly, and our red wave parents have done such a good job waiting until their appropriate time, that we feel that traffic is moving quickly enough to allow for the red wave to now enter our lot at 3:25 pm rather than hold off until 3:30 pm.

• Please communicate requests for wave time exemption needs at least 24 hours in advance to Mr. Maiorano and Mr. Hoyer so that we can move toward accommodating emergency situations whenever possible. We are able to provide our teachers on the lot with special exceptions, but not going through the process of communicating these needs with the school ahead of time and arriving before your wave time may result in students not being put into the queue and longer wait times. Having families arriving at the particular wave times has made an incredible difference as the lower lot has not backed up the upper lot this year and has made for much smother exiting of both lots.

Reminder: We are a closed campus and do not have the infrastructure to support walkers during drop-off and pickup. There are a very small number of approved walkers. Please don’t assume that others can begin walking when these students are seen. Those who meet the walking conditions are in communication with their respective Headmasters, Mr. Brogan-Lower School, Mr. Funes-Upper School, and Ms. Rebecca Danet.

Thanks, Griffins!