Parents Air Concerns Over Busing at Board of Education Meeting

Parents of children at Arrowhead Elementary have said the district's cuts to its bus fleet, which administrators said saved the district a large sum of money, are causing their kids to get home at what they feel are unacceptably late times.

"Unfortunately, I think Arrowhead's buses are the ones who are getting hurt," said Beth Laine, who brought the problem to the attention of the Board of Education last Tuesday.

Laine said her family lives 3.4 miles from the school, which dismisses at 3:40 p.m., but her child does not arrive home until around 5:00 p.m.

Another parent, Susan Stellwagen, said because some buses arrive at the school later than others to pick up the children for their trip home, Arrowhead students are forced to sit on the buses and wait until all the buses have arrived before the drivers are permitted to leave the school.

"If the bus is full, let it go," Stellwagen said. "It may have looked good on paper, but it's not working."

Both parents said they have seem some small improvements over the first few school days, but said their children have been unable to attend after-school activities because they still arrive home so late.

"They need time to do other things besides school," Stellwagen said.

School board president John Diviney said the bus routes and dismissal times were largely dictated by the geographical location of the school. He pledged the district would examine the situation and provide parents with an explanation.

"We are concerned about busing and trying to make it as efficient as possible," Diviney said. "Hopefully over time these problems will enumerate."

Jeff Carlson, assistant superintendent for business services, said the district was able to reduce the number of buses it uses by 25 percent after Ward Melville High School's return to a unified schedule this year. A total of fifteen large school buses were cut this year at a savings of $800,000. Carlson said without those savings, ten or more additional teaching positions would have been eliminated on top of the 21 teaching positions that were already cut.

He also said parents may not be taking into consideration the fact that the elementary schools now dismiss ten minutes later than they did last year.

"As of right now, I don't think things are all that different than they are any other year during the first week or two of school," Carlson said. "Maybe a little bit. There's always some kind of ironing out of problems with transportation at the beginning of the school year."