Kids didn’t feel safe walking to school. 2 JoCo cities work together on upgrades

Leah Maugans’ son was just 6 years old when he got hit by a car as he was crossing a busy street near the Maugans’ home in north Leawood.

He did everything right, she said. He looked both ways. He slowly crossed the street, but the driver of the oncoming vehicle didn’t see him.

Although it took a while for her son to regain his confidence in riding his bike, he now loves riding his bike and the independence it brings — even if he’s more cautious when it comes to riding in the neighborhood.

“Something traumatic happened in the only way out of our neighborhood that we had to face in order to use, or engage, in walking or riding bikes,” Maugans said. “It took us a long time before he felt confident doing it on his own.”

As a fourth grader at Corinth Elementary, her now 10-year-old son rides his bike to meet with his friends and rides the nearly two-and-a-half miles to school almost every day when the weather allows.

“It’s such an important thing, it’s just a very human, childhood thing that’s worth protecting,” Maugans said. “It’s not available to every kid but it’s really good for us.”

After her son got hit by a car, Maugans began advocating for safer streets for pedestrians in Leawood alongside a wider effort to make the Johnson County city more walkable. North Leawood in particular tends to have older, narrower sidewalks — with some roadways not having sidewalks at all — and busy roads like 83rd Street and Lee Boulevard lack crosswalks for kids and families to move across the road safely.

“I’m not an elected official, I’m a parent that just cares,” she said.

In particular, Maugans focused a lot of her efforts on the roads near Corinth Elementary, where dozens of students, like her son, bike to school nearly every day on the sidewalks with little margin for error.

“As a driver I can tell you it’s scary to drive on that street when school is out or coming into session. Kids are wobbly on their bikes, many parents see kids falling and they are falling in the street,” Maugans said. “A lot of parents don’t let their kids walk or bike to school because the infrastructure was keeping people from participating.”

But the problem isn’t just confined to Leawood. The school’s boundaries span both Leawood and Prairie Village, requiring the Johnson County cities to work together to make sure their sidewalks and pedestrian safety features cohesively blend for the increasing number of pedestrians who cross city lines on a regular basis, including students.

“Boundary lines are invisible to our commuters,” said Beth Breitenstein, Leawood’s strategic communications director. “More people are out and about, walking and caring about their health and the mentality has changed from streets are for cars only to streets are for people.”

“We have done and implemented measures to react to evolving times and understand there are more people walking out and about.”

Biking to school

Corinth Elementary currently serves 596 students in the Shawnee Mission School District — a steady increase from 564 students in the 2017-2018 school year, district spokesperson David Smith said in an email to The Star.

The Leawood city line sits to the east of Corinth and Prairie Village to the west. Leawood’s boundary with Prairie Village cuts through 83rd Street between Mission and Wenonga roads.

Corinth Elementary has students coming in from both sides of the city line, but Shawnee Mission doesn’t track how many students ride scooters or bikes or walk to school, Smith said.

Anecdotally, Maugans— who also sits as Corinth’s PTA president — estimated it’s likely at least 150 kids who walk or ride bikes or scooters to the school.

“On busy days, there’s over 50, 60 bikes, electric bikes or scooters. That’s not including the walkers. It is a ton,” she said.

As part of her role as PTA president, Maugans sent out a survey to parents regarding pedestrian safety concerns. More than 100 parents participated, many saying that the volume of students is outpacing the existing pedestrian infrastructure, she said.

The school district and Corinth parents have talked with both cities to make improvements on 83rd Street, Mission Road and Lee Boulevard — the main roadways students use to bike to Corinth.

Worries on Lee Boulevard

Lee Boulevard in particular has become a big focus for Leawood parents — with one child who died at the hospital after being hit by a car on the roadway.

“In some areas (on Lee), there are no buffer zones,” said Lindsay Lohrey, a Leawood resident who lives right off of 83rd and Lee. “The speed is higher than 35 miles per hour for Lee from end to end.”

Like Maugans, Lohrey’s fourth grader bikes to and from school every day, but she worries for her son’s safety while biking on Lee since there are not a lot of stop lights and only a couple of crosswalks with flashing beacons that some drivers “just plow through.”

“Parents are asking for infrastructure safety because it applies to everyone — people riding bikes to school, people walking outside of Corinth Elementary and going home, crossing the street,” Lohrey said. “83rd Street was a project that was already somewhat in place and with the intersection of the discussion of safety in general, the project is adding more safety measures.”

What’s happening on 83rd Street?

In November, the Leawood City Council approved additional pedestrian safety features to a major roadway improvement project on 83rd Street following resident feedback.

Specifically, the efforts will widen the sidewalks to at least five feet — with some areas seeing 8-foot sidewalks — and narrow the roads to 29 feet to help slow traffic down, Ley said.

To bring attention to pedestrians crossing the street, the public works team will also add rapid flashing beacons when the road crosses the north leg of Wenonga Road.

Leawood will replace traffic signals at State Line Road and Lee Boulevard with left turn signals that will turn red if pedestrians are crossing to better protect them. Separately, the city is proposing to install a new crosswalk with flashing beacons at 81st Street and Lee, he said.

Before the major work on 83rd Street begins, the Leawood Public Works Department has worked throughout December to put in new concrete in order to smooth out the current sidewalks on 83rd — which were last updated in 1995 — and prevent trip hazards, Public Works Director David Ley said.

The team repainted crosswalks, painted a white line three feet in from the curb to bring cars closer together, slow the traffic down and create a larger buffer with the sidewalk.

Collaborating with Prairie Village

But the plight of Corinth students extends beyond the city line, and Prairie Village has been making changes too.

The city is realigning its sidewalks to make it easier for pedestrians to cross the street safely.

As part of the project, Prairie Village agreed to narrow its portion of 83rd by two feet, with a focus on a pinchpoint near the Corinth Cemetery — which has narrow sidewalks that sit right on the road without a buffer between the street.

“There’s a lot more kids in that area by the cemetery at the same time. The school lets out and there’s a lot more going on,” Bredehoeft said. “There’s not a lot you can do other than narrowing the roadway, so we are going to modify that and see if there’s anything else we can do.”

To help slow down traffic, Prairie Village is extending its school zone on the east side of Mission Road, Prairie Village Public Works Director Keith Bredehoeft said

“There’s a lot of bikers, pedestrians, different skill levels, there’s just concerns. So we looked at what we could do (on) our side,” Bredehoeft said. “In the short-term, we are working with Leawood to help with that transition at city limit lines because the pavement is a little skewed.”

Evolving infrastructure

How Leawood has built its infrastructure has shifted from a steady focus on developing four-way roadways for “pretty much every mile” to looking at all modes of transportation, Ley said.

About 10 years ago, the city began “right-sizing” its roadways and tried to provide better connectivity for various modes of transportation beyond just cars.

However, as time went on and technology evolved, other challenges have come up, like distracted driving and larger cars, city spokesperson Breitenstein added.

Prairie Village Public Works Director Bredehoeft added that there are more pedestrians on the roads, including people who ride on electric scooters and e-bikes. But it’s challenging because Prairie Village doesn’t have the right-of-ways it would need to build a wide, separated path for bikes or scooters.

“We can’t design our sidewalks differently because we don’t have a lot of space for them,” he said. “That’s definitely been challenging to know how the future will play out and I know the county is looking at it regionally.”

Wider efforts

While she’s excited to see the improvements to 83rd and Lee, Maugans said she’d like to see a “holistic approach” to pedestrian safety – both in the school district and throughout the metro.

At the school level, Maugans has advocated for pedestrian safety to be included in the physical education curriculum at Corinth.

“In order to make sure everyone knows the consistent rules of the road, there has to be holistic education,” she said. “It would be great for every school to have some type of pedestrian bike safety education as a life skill because we have an involved school where parents can advocate, but other schools might not have that luxury.”

As of Jan. 12, the Shawnee Mission School District doesn’t have plans to add pedestrian safety to the curriculum and anticipates “that it would be difficult to do as we don’t have the resources to ensure that every student has a bike to learn on,” Smith, the district spokesperson, said.

On a larger scale, Maugans wants to see more cities work together in order to promote connectivity and preserve pedestrian access as the metro continues to grow.

“Communities that create safe opportunities to do that are communities that thrive, and I think that should be valued for this whole metro,” she said.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included photo captions that said they were taken in Leawood, when some depict areas including Prairie Village.

This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 6:14 AM.