School officials say the measure protecting kids on their way to school could make them unsafe.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published May 16, 2004
In a news release, Sen. Mike Fasano trumpeted passage of a bill he sponsored that will prohibit certain sex offenders from living near school bus stops.
"This legislation has been several years in the making," Fasano said in the release. "No longer will the worst of the worst be allowed to live anywhere near a location where children spend most of their waking lives."
With more than 30,000 registered sex offenders statewide, Fasano's press release did not specify how many offenders his bill targets.
The best guess from the Department of Corrections: 35.
And, in the opinion of the transportation director for Pasco schools, the benefit of such a law is questionable no matter how few or many offenders it targets.
"In some cases," Mike Park said, "we're going to put kids in more harm."
Under the bill's rules, certain offenders cannot move near a bus stop, but once an offender does move into a home, bus stops must keep clear of it. This forces children who may move in nearby to walk farther along roads to get to their bus stops. Any time you make children walk farther in potential traffic, you increase their risk, Park said.
And no matter how far away a bus stop is placed from an offender, kids who live nearby are likely to have to walk right past the offender's home to get there anyway, Park said.
The bottom line, he said, is that parents should be there to supervise their children as they wait at a bus stop anyway.
"It doesn't happen, but it should," Park said. "They're responsible for them until they step on the bus - by law."
After four sessions in the Legislature, the bill finally made it to Gov. Jeb Bush's office last week, and the governor signed it on Thursday.
Since it was first introduced in 2001, its opposition has come from school officials, particularly in Pinellas County.
Such a law, they argued, would create chaos in school systems where bus stops are frequently relocated. Pinellas County students are picked up at about 15,000 different bus stops. Mapping them out is already a logistical headache.
Pasco County has between 6,000 and 7,000 school bus stops. Dozens of their locations must be changed each day as kids move here and there, according to Park.
"When I first heard (about the bill), I said, "Oh my god, this is going to be a nightmare to enforce,' " Park said.
But he and other school officials were relieved to learn just how few offenders Fasano's bill actually impacts.
Fasano's bill changes the state's conditional release statute, which applies to certain repeat or heinous offenders released from prison after serving their time.
For those of them who are sex offenders and whose victims are under 18, the conditions of their release include a prohibition against living within 1,000 feet of a school, day care center, park or playground.
Fasano's bill adds school bus stop to that list.
The new law will not affect the vast majority of state-supervised sex offenders: those on probation.
Fasano said he would have made the bill broader if he could have and insisted school administrators should be willing to bear the burden of keeping bus stops away from sex offenders. He points out that the bill was passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate.
"So who was opposing this bill?" he said. "It wasn't my colleagues in the House and Senate. It wasn't the governor . . . It was those who were concerned that they might have to do a little more paperwork. It was those who were concerned that they may just have to work a little bit harder in protecting our children."
