Neighborhood wins school bus service

After sitting through a nearly five-hour School Board meeting Monday night, a determined group of downtown residents secured transportation to school for their children.

The group, which included children, parents, senior citizens and neighbors, patiently sat through what board members dubbed the most frustrating meeting of the year to secure six months of shuttle service for neighborhood elementary school children.

Board member Larry Mason moved that the neighborhood near 15th and Fremont streets have a shuttle to carry about 75 students to and from Crestwood Elementary School through a neighborhood known as a high crime area.

"All we were asking was for the district to help get these kids to school, so they can have a chance for an education and be able to move out of the Fremont Street area," said Earl White, a housing coordinator with RPS, a corporation that provides affordable housing.

The board will work with the neighborhood in hopes of finding an alternative form of transportation in the second semester of the school year, Mason said.

Crestwood, located south of Charleston Boulevard, is only a little over a mile from the neighborhood in question, but because of the safety concerns the board made an exception to its 2-mile busing limit.

Other valley parents weren't as lucky as they lobbied for bus service for their children only to be told there was nothing the board could do.

"This meeting is always so sad," board member Lois Tarkanian said. "It's terrible being up here and hearing about these children that are 1.9 miles from a school and walking across huge, busy streets.

"It's rough, but it's a problem throughout the entire district."

The problem comes up every year, transportation and safety committee chairwoman Susan Brager said.

"We do the best we can with the limited resources we have," Brager said. "We'd like to move the minimum busing distance for elementary schools down to a mile, but we just don't have the resources.

"The parents in this district need to demand the Legislature to hold an emergency session and tell them that their children are not safe, and money needs to be allocated for transportation."

archive