After a student is killed, school officials pledge to look at all county bus routes to make sure no other students are left to cross large highways.
By ROBERT FARLEY
Published October 12, 2004
[Times photo: Kathleen Flynn]
Rebecca McKinney's mother, Sally, gives Rebecca's brother, Doug, a hug during a candlelight vigil across the street from where she was struck by a pickup after trying to cross McMullen-Booth Road on Friday. ""Swim your heart out for Becky,'' Sally said to one of Rebecca's friends. Rebecca was a member of Clearwater High's swim team.
[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
A Pinellas County school bus carries students from Clearwater High School and prepares to turn at San Bernardino Street on Monday. Pinellas buses 47,000 students a day.
Leah Braukman (right), 16, a Palm Harbor University High swim team member, holds a card she made Monday for her team to give to the Clearwater High swim team. The Clearwater team lost Rebecca McKinney (photo above), who died Sunday.
CLEARWATER - For years, Rebecca McKinney's school bus dropped her on the east side of McMullen-Booth Road. And every school afternoon, she ran across the busy, six-lane highway to get home.
On Friday afternoon, as she and her sister tried to cross the road, she was struck by a pickup headed south. The 16-year-old Clearwater High School junior died Sunday.
The accident has left Pinellas school officials investigating how she came to be assigned to a bus stop that required her to cross six lanes of traffic.
According to the school district's transportation policy, students should not be dropped at stops that require them to cross multiple-lane highways, district spokesman Ron Stone said.
McKinney's grandmother, Betsy Gerhard, said Monday that Rebecca's mother Sally complained to school officials for years about the bus stop, to no avail.
"She has complained so many times that the transportation department knows her by her first name," Gerhard said.
She did not know whether Mrs. McKinney restated those complaints again this year.
Stone said district records show no complaints about the bus stop this year. Transportation officials are now checking prior years. Had McKinney or any other resident complained, he said, the girl would have been placed on another bus that stops on the west side of McMullen-Booth Road.
The district is now looking into its routes countywide to see whether there are any other instances where students must cross multiple-lane highways, Stone said.
Most of the routes are drawn up by an automated system that cannot be programmed to account for students having to cross multiple-lane highways, Stone said. That is left up to transportation routers, and sometimes to parent complaints.
The district buses 47,000 students a day, and there are tens of thousands of bus stops, Stone said.
"Things can fall between the cracks," he said.
Area residents who have seen students crossing McMullen-Booth Road said such a tragedy was waiting to happen.
Phyllis Phillips of Clearwater said she had commented recently to friends about the danger of students crossing McMullen-Booth Road.
"That's a scary situation," she said.
The buses ought to at least drop students at nearby intersections with traffic lights, she said.
Clearly, said School Board member Mary Russell, students should not be crossing multiple-lane highways.
"Anyone who knows of this happening or has seen it happening, please call the district so it'll stop," Russell said.
Carol Cook, vice chair of the School Board, said independent investigators will be looking into the accident.
"We need to find out how this happened," Cook said. "If there are things we need to change, then we need to do it. We need to look at this all the way around. My heart gos out to the family."
Checking routes countywide also was the family's focus Monday.
"This has to make an impact on the community," Gerhard said. "Something has to be done. It's the rest of the kids in the county we're concerned with."
Family and friends said Sally McKinney's mother was too busy making funeral arrangements to comment Monday.
Gerhard said the family has not yet considered possible legal action.
"Our mind hasn't gone there yet," she said. "We're dealing with so much."
