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Q. Every school day about 2:30 p.m. on Baileywick Road near the new school, Magellan Charter, there is a long line of parents waiting in the roadway to get into the school to pick up kids. It is a very dangerous situation because in order to get around the waiting cars heading west, one has to drive into the oncoming traffic lane. The school should build another lane for the parents to wait on.

Another problem is that the people on Hunter Road are almost blocked in with highway cones which were placed to keep the parents from driving down that road to turn around.

Before the school was built, the Hunter Road people stated that they didn't want the school driveway coming out on their road. One can certainly see their reasoning. Now the school placement has come to bite them in a way similar to what they had envisioned.

We, taxpayers, should NOT have to pay for mistakes in planning for that school being where it is, when it was bad planning all the way around.

-- Maggy Fegers

A. The Magellan Charter School has about 395 students and opened this past August. Mary Griffin, the school's administrator, says that since the school year has started, staff have worked to make the drop-off and pick-up times run more smoothly.

"We're continually examining and tweaking the system," she said.

For instance, all the students used to dismiss at the same time from an outside waiting area. Now they are called to the gymnasium in groups and dismiss from there, which speeds things along.

Another change is that cars now form two lines around the school instead of one.

The school uses an intricate numbering system to get children into the gym and then loaded into cars.

At dismissal, cars loop around the long building and spill out onto Baileywick Road. Griffin says the safety issues happen when cars on Baileywick are impatient and decide to pass into the oncoming lane.

"It's slow but not stopped," she says. Griffin thinks drivers should be more patient and considerate.

"This is part of traveling through a city when kids are dismissing," she said. "The majority of schools have some back-up at dismissal."

Griffin said that, in preparation for opening, the school did everything requested by the city, including paying to have the road widened in front of the school, creating a center turn lane. She says the city did not suggest that an extra lane be added for pick-up and drop-off of students.

As for the cones at the end of Hunter Drive, Griffin believes that they were placed there by residents of the road to stop parents from using the road to turn around.

"We have nothing to do with that," she said.