CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: School Street Closures in Ashby Debate

For thirty minutes every school morning, Larch Street in Ashby falls quiet. Orange barriers seal both ends of the block outside Riverside Elementary, leaving the roadway to children on foot, bicycles and scooters while parents linger and a crossing guard waves at familiar faces. This “school streets” pilot, conducted at two schools this year, may be extended to all eleven of Ashby’s elementary schools.

Harjit Sandhu, the municipality’s active transportation planner, finds the evidence persuasive. At the pilot schools, the proportion of students arriving under their own power rose from 38 to 51 percent, with no collisions recorded during closures. “Parents have long wanted their kids to walk, but they balked at forty cars converging at once,” he reports. Closures would cover the half hour before the morning bell and another after dismissal, and residents holding permits could still drive slowly in and out.

Melanie Corbeil, whose two children attend Riverside, is less effusive. Her shift at a care home begins at 8:30, and the school lies on her way. “Families like mine aren’t driving out of laziness,” she protests. Since the barriers appeared, she parks two blocks away and escorts the children in, frequently arriving late. Her verdict: “Go around that corner and you’ll see the same cars as before.”

Victor Mendes, a retired electrician on Poplar Crescent, one block from the school, reports that his formerly tranquil street now accumulates idling cars every morning. “Twice this spring I couldn’t back out of my own driveway.” Disavowing any hostility to the concept, he wants the surrounding streets studied before further barriers appear.

Dr. Fiona Lachance, a public health professor who researches children’s activity, endorses the program while tempering expectations. Walkers tend to arrive more alert, and distancing engines from entrances diminishes the exhaust children inhale. “But closing one block doesn’t do much for a child facing a busy road ten minutes from home,” she says, and her research ranks distance and dangerous intersections above congestion at the gate in parents’ reckoning. She advocates pairing closures with crossing guards and new sidewalks on principal routes.

A grandmother walking two grandchildren to Riverside each morning, I hope council says yes. The pilot’s figures are difficult to dismiss: 6. Choose…traffic near Riverside easedmore children got movingparents stopped driving near Riversidecrossing guards proved unnecessary. I do sympathize with the care-home worker, who 7. Choose…walks her children in before worklives too far to walkworks an overnight shiftmust collect her children at dismissal; those rushed mornings remain vivid to me. My two now chat the whole way instead of staring at screens. Still, a few more steps seem a modest price for a safer entrance.

The retired electrician rightly points out that 8. Choose…residents’ passes are hard to obtainhis entrance has been sealedclosures start too early for familiescongestion has merely moved, and that deserves study. Above all, I side with the professor. Her plea for 9. Choose…closures at every school gateless exhaust near entrancescrossing guards and sidewalksa survey of nearby streets answers the fear that every walking grandparent knows.

Should council both approve the plan and 10. Choose…extend the half-hour closureissue more permitslimit closures to Riverside another yearmake routes safer too, families will wonder why we waited.