Wednesday, August 13, 2003
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 |
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BOE defends shorter bus routes as kids have to walk farther By J. FRANK LYNCH
Responding to the scores of angry parents who continued to flood the central office with calls of complaint this week about drastically reduced bus routes, the Fayette County school system issued an apology Tuesday morning. The formal statement, released to the media via the Internet around 9 a.m. Tuesday, stressed the importance of student safety in the district's overall mission while outlining some of the budget concerns that led to the cutbacks. The statement appears on Page 8A. "The school system apologizes to its parents and students if this change causes difficulty," read the statement. "The transportation staff will continue to look at the routes and make changes as necessary. The school system appreciates the community's understanding as parents and staff work through these issues together." The apology was too little too late for many residents in the neighborhoods most affected by the policy change, which raises the acceptable distance a child should be expected to walk from school to home or home to a bus stop from 0.3 mile to 0.5 mile. But according to parents, some children in The Estates neighborhood off Robinson Road in south Peachtree City are being asked to walk more than a mile to and from Braelinn Elementary. It is 0.4 mile from the school to the furthest entrance to The Estates off Robinson Road, and some children live in houses nearly a mile down winding streets to the back of the subdivision, said parent Lara Long. Long and her husband, Jeff, have been instrumental in organizing their neighbors into action, circulating "background" papers on the legal aspects of the decision and contact names and phone numbers of officials at the county office. The Estate's homeowner's association is scheduled to meet tonight (Aug. 13) to discuss options for getting service restored. Another group of Peachtree City parents plans to attend the Aug. 18 Board of Education meeting en masse. In addition to The Estates, bus service was eliminated entirely from The Marks and Huntington Place, the three neighborhoods closest to Braelinn, Long said. "They just drew a big circle out from the school and if you fell in it, they cut your service," said Long. Elsewhere around the county, parents in the Oak Grove and Kedron neighborhoods of Peachtree City took to the phones, and at least one neighborhood in the Fayetteville area had a large number of parents rally. Middle and high schools were largely unaffected by the change since fewer teens ride the buses. More annoying to some parents was the way they found out about the change. Melinda Berry-Dreisbach of the school district's public information office said letters dated last Monday, Aug. 4, went out to the families of all affected, but few reported getting one. Most found out about the change at elementary school open houses held Thursday night. Throughout much of the county, buses that used to go down subdivision streets now stop on the "trunk" route, or main arterial roads, and students are being asked to gather at the entrances to their neighborhoods. According to Long, The Estates doesn't even have that luxury. School Board Chair Terri Smith confirmed Tuesday that the five-member board okayed the change June 2 as part of a blanket tentative approval of the 2003-04 operations budget. Transportation Director Pam Holt presented the proposal to raise the distance limits by 0.2 mile as part of an agenda item simply labeled "Tentative Approval of FY04 Budget." The vote to accept the entire $148 million budget, including the transportation adjustment, passed 5-0 with little debate or discussion. Board members, school district staff and the media were the only people present at that meeting, and the item was not broken out for separate discussion or public notification. The savings this school year, estimated by Holt to be in the neighborhood of $1.25 million, according to a memo circulated to school system staff, is largely from not purchasing 20 buses, but instead leasing replacement vehicles. Less wear and tear on the buses, due to them running shorter routes, makes up for another small savings. Smith, a Brooks resident, refused to comment specifically about the situation at The Estates, though she acknowledged that was one of the neighborhoods that had logged many phone calls. Holt and her staff were committed to dealing personally and directly with each parent as well, Smith said, a task that is taking time, for obvious reasons. "By making these changes, we eliminated the need for more bus drivers, more buses, more gas, more maintenance," she said. "We saved more than $1.25 million." She urged parents to be patient and understanding, and said the main criteria being used in all complaint cases was the issue of safety. "For certain groups of people, where there are true safety issues, those will be addressed individually," she said. "And where there is a safety issues, we are having our people go out there, often with law enforcement officers along, to investigate." Smith said that many of the complaints she has received reflected more a disruption of convenience, rather than a true concern for safety. "When my children rode the bus, I always drove them to the bus stop and waited with them in my car until the bus came," she said, admitting to being as "overly protective" as any Fayette County mom. "I always saw my children to the bus, but now with the bus stop has moved out of the view of a lot of these parents, and they are going to have to adjust to the change." The news hasn't been all bad for many parents, especially those who began calling early Friday to figure out what was going on. Dawn and Kevin Featherston were one of more than 50 who called from the Spooner Ridge neighborhood in north Peachtree City to complain, and their persistence paid off. Dawn Featherston said Holt called her personally late Friday afternoon to report that two stops previously dropped in their neighborhood had been restored.
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