Parents, students plead for buses

For a city whose streets are believed paved with gold, the students at Molasky Middle School walk a daunting path of muddy soil and glass-littered desert vying with morning commuters and heavy trucks.

That was the testimony presented by about three dozen parents and students Thursday night as Las Vegas Councilman Larry Brown and school district officials met to air grievances and discuss possible solutions to what has become a major safety issue.

A long-standing Clark County School District policy requires students living within a 2-mile radius of a school to get there without district buses.

"There is no safe place to walk out there," said Brenda Saylors, whose son attends Molasky and walks just under two miles to school. "I don't care how many paths you put out there, I don't care what you do."

Patrick Scheiwiller, 13, rides his bike from Alexander Road and Rainbow Boulevard, crossing over U.S. 95 to the school at Gilmore Avenue and Buffalo Drive.

"There are broken bottles everywhere and I've already gotten two flats," Scheiwiller said.

Students as young as 12 lug 20-pound knapsacks and musical instruments and often stray into vacant desert where parents fear predators lurk.

On Thursday morning, Scheiwiller and other students were joined along their route by Brown, toting a backpack. Along the way he noticed long stretches of roads without speed limit signs. He slogged through construction-created puddles and had to venture into traffic at one point to avoid a rolled-up carpet.

And he's a grown-up.

Students attending Ruthe Deskin Elementary who live in the same neighborhoods as the Molasky students are bused because the district has specified crossing U.S. 95 as too hazardous.

Beth Reynolds, vice-president of Deskin's Parent Teacher Student Organization, said it makes no sense that the Molasky students who graduated from year-round school at Deskin in August had to walk the same streets they were bused over just two weeks earlier.

"How can it become safe in just two weeks?" she asked.

Lauren Longmire, transportation field investigator for the district, said similar busing requests are common throughout the nation's fifth-largest school system.

If the district reduced the walking distance to 1.5 miles -- which would appease most of the Molasky parents -- it would cost between $12 and $13 million annually, Longmire said.

"If I could give you a bus today, I would give every child a bus," Longmire said.

Brown urged parents to make their case an exception to the others the Clark County School Board hears.

For the city's part, he promised the Public Works Department would work on more speed limit signs, better graded walkways and possibly temporary asphalt paths in some areas.

"I think we're all on the same side," Brown said. "We can do our best to mitigate the situations that aggravate our children getting to school safely."

archive