Education

Student death in Woodburn prompts leadership plan to create safer routes to school

By Elizabeth Miller (OPB)
Dec. 17, 2022 1:54 a.m.

A Woodburn high school student, struck by a train while walking to school, died earlier this month.

The Woodburn High community continues to mourn the loss of 17-year-old Jesus Garcia Santiago. A GoFundMe page set up by his cousin exceeded its funding goal. Even people who did not know the teen left messages of support.

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“My kids loved him so much that seeing them break down in tears after hearing the news of his passing broke my heart even more,” Nayelly Gonzalez wrote on the GoFundMe page. “There is no easy way to deal with the loss of a loved one.”

After Garcia Santiago’s death on Dec. 2, Woodburn School District officials deployed a team to help grieving students and staff.

A memorial near the railroad tracks where Jesus Garcia Santiago was killed. Now the Woodburn School District is trying to map out safer walking paths to school.

A memorial near the railroad tracks where Jesus Garcia Santiago was killed. Now the Woodburn School District is trying to map out safer walking paths to school.

Courtesy of Joe Morelock

District office staff also dug up older documents to put together a new plan for pedestrian safety improvements. Superintendent Joe Morelock said the need for safer routes to school is not new in Woodburn.

“It’s not the first time we’ve been working on these — we already had a map,” Morelock said. “These are the things we have identified and we cannot get traction.”

While Morelock is relatively new to the district, he knows other incidents in the past led to a crosswalk being built near the high school. But he said more needs to be done, especially for Woodburn students who live in affordable housing near the high school and need to cross state highway 214 and Front Street, a busy main road, on their walk.

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“Our high school is not going to move from where it is — it’s essential next to a large highway, a main arterial, and train tracks,” Morelock said. “We have to figure out how we can get our folks at ODOT and the City of Woodburn to help us create more safe routes to school.”

The proposed improvements include increased lighting at multiple points along different routes to school, as well as an elevated walking path over highway 214.

A map details the safety improvements proposed by the Woodburn School District.

A map details the safety improvements proposed by the Woodburn School District.

Courtesy of Woodburn School District / OPB

Garcia Santiago was killed while crossing train tracks — a route many students use as a shortcut because the main route is a quarter mile out of the way. District officials want to see a more direct path to campus to discourage students from crossing the tracks.

Providing safe routes to school has long been a concern statewide and nationally. Recently in Portland, the death of a cyclist near Cleveland High School in southeast Portland prompted renewed calls for more safety on Powell Boulevard. Pedestrian deaths in the Portland area reached an all-time high last year.

In Woodburn, Morelock has started recruiting volunteers for a workgroup to help move the district’s plans forward. Once it’s up and running, he said the workgroup will soon start sending letters to city and state officials to raise awareness about the issue.

“As a school district, we don’t really have the power to change the highway, but we may have some power to be able to apply pressure to get others to make adjustments to those spaces for pedestrian safety,” Morelock said.

He said the district has been in touch with the Safe Routes to Schools program from the national Department of Transportation.

As for funding, Morelock hopes that there may be grants or ODOT funding sources available to make the improvements outlined in the district’s plan. He said the district’s own funds are spent supporting students in the classroom and inside of schools.

“Sometimes it takes an unfortunate tragedy like this to raise that awareness for other people to hear about it,” Morelock said. “This is our Woodburn community, and they are united in that they don’t want to see another student killed.”

Woodburn High School in Woodburn, Oregon, Saturday, July 22, 2017.

Woodburn High School in Woodburn, Oregon, Saturday, July 22, 2017.

Bradley W. Parks / OPB

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