A parent's worries about her son's bus stop has the School Board wondering whether its complaint system is flawed.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
Published May 3, 2004
[Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark]
Susan Higgs, right, who is partially paralyzed, and her 10-year-old son, Trevor, wave at a school bus as it passes Trevor's old bus stop west of Brooksville last week. Trevor's stop was moved one-fifth of a mile down the street.
[Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark]
Susan Higgs, from left, James Atkins, 10, and Higgs' 10-year-old son, Trevor, look down the road toward the boys' new bus stop last week. Higgs' disability makes it hard to walk Trevor to the stop.
BROOKSVILLE - The walk of one-fifth of a mile to Trevor Higgs' new bus stop might not seem like a hardship to many.
But to Trevor's mom, Susan, the move might as well have been across the universe.
She is partially paralyzed from strokes she suffered a decade ago, when giving birth to her son. Getting Trevor safely down the hill and around a blind curve along narrow Casson Street, west of Brooksville, is a major undertaking. She doesn't want to leave the fourth-grader alone at the out-of-sight stop because there's a restraining order against his father.
Susan Higgs and family members got nowhere, though, when they tried more than three weeks to informally resolve the matter with the district transportation department.
Last week, they entered the district's official complaint procedure, which is being revised to add, for the first time, deadlines by which the district must respond. Even without the new time frames, district support services executive director Edd Poore said he would move to quickly settle the matter.
"We are bound to make a reasonable accommodation for someone who is handicapped," Poore said.
But fast action in bureaucratic terms does not necessarily equate to fast action. And some School Board members are looking at whether the Higgs case points out a flaw in their newly tightened complaint policy.
"Even 15 days is three full weeks," board member Gail David said. "That wouldn't help a family with an immediate concern. This raises a really good point about complaints as they deal with safety."
When the board considers final action on the revisions, David said, she might propose a different set of firm response times for complaints where safety is involved.
Superintendent Wendy Tellone is quick to point out that most problems get worked out without entering the complaint process. Through Wednesday, her office had logged only 85 formal complaints, including two regarding bus stops.
Among the 85, two had risen past the initial level, with one making it to Tellone's desk for review.
It has been the exceptions to the rule, however, that have drawn the board's attention. Board members have mentioned cases where families filed complaints that dragged on for months without resolution as examples of why the district needs to set forth clear response deadlines.
Some pushed for a three-day timeline, while others supported the administration's request for 30 working days. They compromised at 15, for a trial run.
If you ask Higgs and her family, that's not good enough.
Back in March, Higgs said, she told her son's bus driver that they would not be using the bus for a couple of weeks. She planned to take the boy directly to school before going to therapy.
When they returned to ride the bus, they found that transportation officials had moved the stop. The family learned of the change informally, never receiving a letter. Last week, the route was changed, too, to stop passing the family's home.
Rather than send Higgs down the hill with Trevor, friends and family members have skipped work (or sleep after the graveyard shift) to drive them to and from Moton Elementary School. They suggested things would have been better off left alone.
"They're not looking at what her needs are," said Ken Edwards, a family friend. "They have a disabled person with a child in their school system."
Poore said the bus route was changed as part of a routine review of bus stops, "without knowing who was involved." Fixing the problem should be relatively simple, he added, once the family submits paperwork showing Higgs is fully disabled and is Trevor's natural mother.
If the family had complained sooner, he said, the situation could have been resolved quicker.
But getting the proper people on the phone, much less knowing the right people to call, has taken time, said Henry Miller, the boyfriend of Higgs' mother. And every passing day is a possibly unsafe one for Higgs and her son.
"I'm just trying to get this resolved as soon as possible," a harried Miller said Thursday, talking on one line with a reporter and on another with school transportation officials. "I'm not getting nowhere."
He was baffled that the situation existed at all.
"It should have been stopped before they changed the route," Miller said.
School Board Chairwoman Sandra Nicholson said she wished she had learned earlier of the Higgs' problems. She noted the complaint system can succeed only when used properly.
If it doesn't work, Nicholson added, the board needs to refine it.
A final hearing on the district's revised complaint policy is scheduled for May 18.
