Students at Pine Ridge Elementary could soon have a safe way to walk to school, and it’s all because of a student project.

More than 300 students at Pine Ridge Elementary lost their buses to budget cuts in 2013. Outside the school Thursday morning, there was a long line of cars dropping off students, and only a handful walking with their parents.

“Most of it is because of the road we have," parent Jon Rodriguez said standing alongside County Road 561.

"There is not really a way to get in," Rodriguez said. "It’s not as safe as it normally should be.”

Third and fourth graders spent the past few weeks working on a Problem Based Learning Project called S.A.F.E., or Safe Access For Everyone.

They surveyed their surroundings and surveyed parents, and found the biggest barrier to walking to school safely was the lack of sidewalks. Another problem the students identified is how quickly cars pass the school. The speed limit is 55 miles per hour. The students determined the flashing school zone sign's location is also an issue.

“It’s right near the school and it needs to moved farther away from the school so drivers can have time to slow down, before they even reach the school,” third grader Nicholas Cutler explained.

The students presented their findings on how much it would cost to fix the problem to Lake County commissioners and school board members.

“It was like $820,000," student Brayden Darin said.

County commissioner Sean Parks said funding could be raised by a penny sales tax within two years.

He believes mistakes were made in site planning by the Lake County School Board and Lake County Board of County Commissioners more than a decade ago. But he said thanks to the students, engineers are already incorporating their ideas into preliminary designs to fix the issue.

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll just see some changes,” Cutler said.

“They are going to be able come back and say I did that, it was because of them that we got this done,” Commissioner Parks said.

Lake County commissioners recently voted to make people the number one transportation priority in the county. Meaning no new road can be built without first considering sidewalk access.