Community members from two Westside schools recently pressured the City of San Antonio for new traffic safety measures.
The result: “No Parking” signs at one elementary school and a crosswalk with flashing lights at a high school.
In Cleto L. Rodriguez Elementary School’s case, the changes came months after parent-led efforts, a petition and traffic studies helped the community get around municipal red tape.
In John Jay High School’s case, traffic improvement came after a tragic accident and a student’s death.
Advocates from both campuses say more changes are needed still.
“They did help push some things through and got some signage redone, but I don’t feel like it’s sufficient,” said Vanessa Reveles, a member of the parent-teacher association at Cleto L. Rodriguez Elementary. “No one did anything until I was a thorn in somebody’s side.”
The school sits in the heart of an old West Side neighborhood, right next to Our Lady of the Lake University between W César E Chávez Blvd. and SW 24th St.
Originally built in 1932, the streets around the campus are narrow.
It also offers one of two public Montessori programs in San Antonio, serving grades pre-K through fifth and drawing in students from all over the city. Usually offered at private schools, Montessori programs promote student-led and project-based learning and child independence.
While the school has a main entrance and large parking lot, parents of preschoolers and kindergarteners have to sign out their kids at a different door, per SAISD policy.
During pick-up and dismissal, the narrow two-way street at W César E Chávez Blvd. quickly gets congested with preschool and kindergarten parents parking so that they can pick up their kids, while other cars cut through the neighborhood to skip traffic off SW 24th st.
To alleviate the overflow, OLLU officials allow Rodriguez families to park in the university’s athletic parking lot across the street.
After one parent reported their car door was clipped by a passing car and families aired other concerns about safety, Rodriguez Elementary’s parent-teacher association decided it was time to get the city involved.
Reveles, whose own preschooler is enrolled at Rodriguez, launched an online petition for “traffic-calming measures,” including speed bumps, pedestrian islands and enlarged crosswalks. She got 362 signatures, a green light from the school principal and a letter of support from OLLU.
The PTA met with councilwoman Teri Castillo, and then school board trustee Stephanie Torres and Reveles regularly emailed the city engineer who got assigned to the case.
San Antonio’s Public Works department conducted a traffic calming study and replaced old, hard-to-read “No Parking” signs on a section of W César E Chávez Blvd with the new signage.
This process started at the end of 2025, and the new traffic signs were installed in April. Local parents don’t think it’s enough, and still want more traffic calming measures like speed bumps and crosswalks.
Reveles plans to request another traffic study soon. “We can submit every year until we get approval, which I intend to do,” she said.
SAISD is currently in the process of modernizing the school district’s facilities to address falling enrollment and aging buildings, pointing to potential closures and consolidations.
Rodriguez closed once in 2019 before later reopening as a Montessori program.
City prioritizes pedestrians
Lots of traffic sign requests come in at the beginning of school years, when congestion is the worst, said Marc Jacobson, assistant director of public works for the traffic division at the City of San Antonio.
These types of requests are initiated through the city’s 311 Customer Service department and followed up on by the Public Works Department.
The city looks at a school’s “safe route,” the neighborhood around the school, plus streets and sidewalks to determine the safest way for students who walk to campus.
The pickup and drop-off location off W César E Chávez Blvd at Rodriguez Elementary isn’t part of the school’s main “safe route.”
But as school enrollment trends change, fewer neighborhood kids are walking to class or taking the bus within a designated school zone — and schools are increasingly attracting students from many parts of town with specialized programs.
In other words, there are just more cars now.
Jacobson’s team can add more traffic features geared at drivers, like the “No Parking” signs at Rodriguez and speed limits posts, but the city first has to determine that a school’s parking situation is a safety hazard.
“One of the things that we look at when we go review these is, how long is this problem?…Most of the time, it’s like a 15-minute problem at the end of the day,” he said.
While school patrol units often help with traffic issues, larger school districts like SAISD are usually dealing with police shortages, prioritizing congestion hotspots and working in “zones” rather than on individual campuses.
Sgt. Joe Garza, patrol supervisor at SAISD, says the best thing parents can do is be patient during pickup and drop-off.
“Let the systems in place work,” he said. “Don’t be in a rush.”
Teen’s death leads to crosswalk improvement
About 10 miles west of Rodriguez Elementary, John Jay High School in Northside ISD is undergoing its own traffic pains.
The high school sits on a busy corridor off Marbach Rd between Loop 410 and Military Drive West.
Last year, John Jay junior Jose Flores III died after getting hit by a truck while crossing the road during an off-campus lunch period.
Since then, his family and West Side councilmen Ric Galvan (D6) and Ed Mungia (D4) have pushed for traffic improvement.
“Our students and families deserve safe, accessible streets — and that begins with action, not delay,” Galvan said in a statement right after Flores died.
Before the school year started in August, the city installed new crosswalk flashing lights on an existing crosswalk regularly used by John Jay students. The city is also conducting a safety study on that corridor to add more traffic improvements in the area.
“We anticipate that we’ll have some recommendations from that early next year,” said Jacobson. “From there, we’ll have to determine what the next steps would be as far as additional projects and funding.”
New school traffic signs are usually paid for by school districts as they undergo renovation and construction projects. The city then maintains those signs through a school pedestrian safety fund with a yearly budget of $1 million.
City council district offices also have discretionary funds that can go toward school traffic safety improvements.
SAISD and NISD are both putting bond measures on the Nov. 3 ballot, seeking voter approval to fund new large infrastructure projects. They both also have unspent funds from previous bond cycles with ongoing construction at several campuses.
“That kind of funding, it could help with possibly upgrading lighting and signage,” said Sgt. Mauricio Hernandez with NISD’s police department. “Safer pedestrian crossings and any of the re-striping of the crosswalks, especially the crosswalks out there on the roadway and on the campus, would help.”
Parents fill in the gaps
For now, parents at Rodriguez Elementary are picking up crossing guard duties to ensure families with preschool and kindergarten students can walk along and cross W César E Chávez Blvd. safely.
Donning neon yellow vests, Jennifer Bielke and Cindy Leija wave “Stop” signs when families cross the street after school lets out. Both have children enrolled at Rodriguez.
They’re both new to the volunteer job, but they said they signed up because there was a clear need, Bielke and Leija said.
The first few weeks of school are usually the worst for traffic, school police officials at SAISD and NISD said. Those weeks also serve as an adjustment period for drivers who used to park on the “No Parking” side of the street during pick up and drop-off.
PTA members worked with the school to make families aware of the changes, and a SAISD patrol stopped by for a few days to ticket any remaining offenders. While the signs ease congestion, parents are still concerned about especially the younger students crossing the street during busy periods.
“We need to help with these kinds of things. It was crazy. It was dangerous,” Bielke said. “There’s a lot of families crossing from this parking lot to this side because we don’t have enough space, right? So it’s just to make it easier for everybody, and it’s faster when you have people helping.”
