Montessori School Expansion Opens To Immediate Parking Chaos

WAUKESHA — Montessori School of Waukesha this week finished a $6.2 million expansion and renovation project that adds 40 new student spaces, a reading nook sized for exactly eleven kindergartners, and a parking lot with 18 new spots, a ratio that Bradley Street residents say they could have done the math on for free.

The project, completed on schedule, now produces a 15-minute backup along Bradley Street during the 7:30 to 8:15 a.m. arrival window and a second, nearly identical backup from 2:45 to 3:30 p.m. Parents who once rolled up five minutes before the bell now arrive 20 minutes early simply to claim a legal curb spot, creating what several describe as a waiting room with wheels.

Margaret Cobin, 58, who lives three houses down from the school's south lot, has filed two complaints with city parking enforcement since Monday. She keeps a lawn chair on her porch now, she said, mostly to have somewhere to sit while she watches it happen.

"It's worse than the school board meetings, and those run two hours and accomplish nothing either."

— Margaret Cobin, Bradley Street resident

The arithmetic

School administrators say the 18 new spots were sized to the building footprint allowed under the city's parking ordinance, not to the 40 new families the expansion was designed to serve. A spokesperson for the school, reached by phone, said the ratio was reviewed and approved during permitting and that additional off-site arrangements are, as of Tuesday, 'under discussion.'

"We're incredibly proud of the new space. We're also aware that pride doesn't get anybody's minivan off Bradley Street by 8:16."

— Deb Rasinski, operations coordinator, Montessori School of Waukesha

Rasinski said the school is considering a staggered drop-off schedule by last name, a suggestion box outside the front office has so far received eleven complaints and one unsigned diagram of a roundabout.

A familiar diagnosis

Bob Krueger, the retired Department of Public Works supervisor who has become something of an unofficial parking commissioner through sheer repetition, drove past the site Wednesday morning and clocked the backup at 14 minutes by his dashboard clock, which he keeps three minutes fast on purpose.

"Every parking problem in this city is the same problem. Somebody built the exciting part first and figured the cars would sort themselves out. The cars never sort themselves out."

— Bob Krueger, retired DPW supervisor

Krueger said he has no formal role in the matter but offered, unprompted, to walk the site with a tape measure. The school has not yet taken him up on it.

City response

Councilman Gary Puchalski said the city is aware of the complaints and is reviewing whether temporary signage, specifically staggered no-parking windows tied to the two daily rush periods, could relieve pressure without requiring the school to acquire additional land, an option Puchalski called 'the nuclear option, zoning-wise.'

In the meantime, parking enforcement has issued six tickets on Bradley Street since Monday, four of them to the same gray Honda Odyssey, whose owner Cobin said she has started to recognize by sound alone.

The school's fall open house, scheduled for October 22, will be held in the evening. Rasinski said this was intentional.