Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Some Lake Washington School District parents - particularly those in the Conifer Ridge neighborhood whose home school is Mark Twain Elementary - are up in arms about their children's school bus route being axed. How can this be, they say, when their homes exceed the one-mile limit from the school - the required minimum to get busing.
On the other hand, the school district says these routes were informal to begin with: friendly arrangements were made among the bus driver, parents and the school. "Drivers, out of the goodness of their hearts, would say, 'I have room for more kids,' and pick up these extra kids," explained Kathryn Reith, the district's public information officer.
So, traditions were established and expectations were formed. Families came to depend on these unregulated stops, some not having any idea of their informality. "When changes get made and transportation doesn't know that the driver was stopping on an informal basis," says Reith, "and suddenly the route is longer, and there's no room for kids. ..." Use your imagination. Retribution is demanded.
And phone lines light up. According to parent Erin Wendt-Lahren, "Parents have made dozens of attempts to contact Jeff Miles, the district's transportation director, with no response." Indeed, Reith admits due to problems with a new phone system, "all six lines in the transportation office were ringing non-stop; people thought that no one was answering the phones."
Wendt-Lahren is one of the parents in the Conifer Ridge neighborhood who claims that there are 25 children in their area who are now stranded without bus service. "Parents were informed by the bus driver during Monday's [Sept. 11] pickup that she wouldn't be back the next day," she says. "The district made no attempts at communication with students or parents whose routes were eliminated."
Unfortunately, it comes down to funding. And definitions of what constitutes a mile.
Schools get transportation funding from both the state and the district. In order to qualify, you've got to obey the rules, which clearly state your home must be more than within a one-mile radius from the school. So there's the definitional rub. A mile radius and a mile on the street are two different things. "In one situation, a student's house was under a mile from the school but the Web site calculation was 1.36 miles," says Reith. "If it's the set of roads that makes sense to go to the school - or if you're in a development on a hill with limited access, sometime you have to go way around."
Reith added that exceptions to the one-mile rule are made when there is no safe walking route. For instance, there's a neighborhood near Conifer Ridge (that's the same distance to the school) that gets bus service because the children would have to cross 132nd.
At the beseechment of his frustrated parents, Mark Twain principal Rick Burden arranged for a meeting at the school with transportation director Miles on Sept. 19.
Since the budget has already been passed, the meeting provided a forum of explanation rather than problem-solving. Miles apologized for not notifying the parents sooner, parent David Lundeen said, but felt "the apology was intended to cover their tracks. There was no listening to us and what we had to say. At the beginning of the meeting, a parent said, 'Is there anything we can do to change the situation,' and the answer was no."
A $3.5 million 2006-07 budget shortfall was identified last year, forcing the school district to trim certain areas and increase fees in others. Reith said the district made a concerted effort to insulate the classrooms from the cuts. In examining the big picture, the district clearly could no longer afford to make unreimbursed stops. The savings amounted to between $30,000 and $40,000. And when a Type D bus with a capacity of 85 children was sometimes slightly over half full, the decision was clear.
Lundeen, who recently moved from just a few blocks away and is now a mile and a quarter walking distance from school, disagrees. "Is it the right place for a budget cut? I say no."
The parent of four (three of whom attend Twain) says all they can do now is petition the school board to air a grievance. He said he's already contacted the Kirkland mayor and city council.
"The transportation department has power to make the final decision. There's nothing else that can be done," admits Lundeen. "The decision is final."[[In-content Ad]]
