Students across Texas are back in the classroom, and the school zone beacons that slow traffic outside their campuses switched on right along with them. The Texas Department of Transportation said in an Aug. 18 news release that the timing is the product of weeks of scheduling work that drivers never see.
In TxDOT’s Dallas District, that responsibility falls largely to one employee. According to the agency, Traffic Signal Technician Tyler Prestien programs school zone flashers for more than 200 schools and school districts across North Texas, reviewing school calendars from a single workstation and updating flasher schedules so the beacons activate at the correct times throughout the year.
The agency said the job is far less laborious than it once was. Describing the system in place a decade ago, Prestien said crews “actually had to physically go to each school flasher and type in school hours for each day and holidays.” Today, TxDOT said, those updates are made from a centralized system.
The complexity now lies in the calendars themselves. Once districts finalize their schedules, Prestien spends several weeks reviewing them and preparing the updates he will direct to flashers across the district, the agency said. No two calendars look exactly alike. “They all do them differently,” Prestien said. “So, I have to figure out their system, to fit our system.” Start dates, holidays, early release days and other schedule variations all have to be accounted for before the information can be loaded into the system.
By the time students arrive on campus, TxDOT said, the work is largely invisible. School zone flashers simply turn on when they are supposed to, signaling drivers to slow down and stay alert around campuses.
For Prestien, the measure of success is straightforward. “The biggest point is just making sure kids don’t get hurt,” he said. The agency said the same behind-the-scenes effort keeps hundreds of school zones across Texas operating on schedule throughout the school year.