A primary school has dismissed an Adelaide City Council proposal to upgrade a nearby side-street – saying there’s a far more pressing need to fix an “unsafe” school crossing and establish a kiss-and-drop zone.

The blunt feedback from North Adelaide Primary School (NAPS) was given at a council committee meeting on Tuesday, in response to a huge suite of road safety upgrades proposed for all 12 schools in the city council area.

The suite includes pedestrian crossing upgrades, school street signs, and new 25km/h speed zones near eight schools.

Two of the speed limit changes are already approved by the government – on Tynte St around NAPS and Sturt St around Sturt St Community School.

A proposal to upgrade two intersections at Margaret St, a small side-street, was criticised by school representative Ben Walters, who told the council committee: “We were told what our priorities were, we disagreed with those.”

“I would take issue with any treatments of Margaret St,” Mr Walters said.

“We’d actually do work on the existing crossing on Gover St – that crossing is unsafe. We still see cars (speeding through the crossing) … that’s not okay.”

He also said a much-needed kiss-and-drop zone would be inexpensive and easy to set up by installing signage.

Kate Vukmanovic, mother of NAPS students Lucy and Rosie, told The Advertiser cars “tend not to notice the speed signs and they come straight through” the crossing at Gover St.

Another parent, who requested anonymity, said cars regularly “went flying” through the crossing and he had witnessed “a lot of dodgy s**t around here”.

Parent Tanya Rozalakis backed the push for a kiss-and-drop, saying she had “circled around” the school multiple times on Wednesday afternoon without finding a spot, admitting she eventually chose “somewhere I shouldn’t be parking”.

A representative of Adelaide High School named Jim, also present at Tuesday’s meeting, slammed the council for proposing an intersection upgrade near his school should be a lower priority, subject to future funding commitments.

He said the West Tce and Currie St intersection was not designed to accommodate the school’s 1800 students, forcing the school to stagger student dismissal times because it was not safe for all students to exit at the same time.

Adelaide City Council city infrastructure director Tom McCready said the council was focusing on measures that could be “implemented quickly” to improve safety.

“We know there’s still work to be done on a range of projects. We will continue to work with schools and the state government,” he said.