The death of a high school student who had to cross a busy road at her bus stop should convince Pinellas administrators that the problem must be fixed now.
Published October 16, 2004
Students should not have to risk their lives getting to and from school each day.
Every school district should have bus route supervisors whose top priority before the start of the school year is to eyeball bus stops and make sure they are safe. Dangerous conditions spotted by supervisors, bus drivers, parents or passersby should be reported and fixed immediately.
That's responsible. That's common sense. But common sense was not in play on a particular bus route in Pinellas County, and now a girl is dead as a consequence.
Furthermore, evidence is streaming in from parents and bus drivers that the conditions that led to 16-year-old Rebecca McKinney's death last week have existed all over Pinellas County for many years. Pinellas school district officials offer only excuses and buck-passing in response.
The district's callousness, reported by those who have complained about bus safety, is horrifying. Not only did the district decide to keep students in harm's way, but it appears to have done so to save time and money and in violation of its own policy.
According to its transportation director, the Pinellas district has a policy that no student should have to cross multiple-lane highways to reach a bus stop. Yet for years McKinney had been dropped off by the school bus on the east side of McMullen-Booth Road in Clearwater and had been scurrying across six lanes of high speed commuter traffic to get to her neighborhood on the west side. Other students on the route did the same. Bus drivers say their supervisors knew that students were having to dodge traffic on McMullen-Booth - without benefit of crossing guards, crosswalks or pedestrian signals and even in the dark during the winter.
McKinney's luck ran out last week, when she darted in front of an oncoming pickup truck. But she was not the first victim. Steven Luteran, 14, was killed in 1992 when he was hit by a driver illegally passing his stopped school bus as he crossed four-lane Clearwater-Largo Road. Because the driver who hit the child was charged, little notice was paid to the fact that Steven's bus stop was on the opposite side of a multilane road from his neighborhood. That was 12 years ago. Clearly, nothing changed.
The Pinellas County school district regularly makes a big deal out of how student safety is its top priority. It installs fences and surveillance cameras on campuses, brings in police and drug dogs, searches students' cars and lockers, administers a tough discipline policy. Then its buses dump students onto some of the most congested roads in Florida and forces them to fend for themselves. It is amazing that more children have not been killed.
Through the years, many parents have told this newspaper that their bus-related safety complaints drew either hostile reactions or mere shrugs from a massively bureaucratic and often troubled school transportation department. Yes, it is a tough job. The district has 10,000 bus stops and transports 47,000 students on buses every day.
The task grew to those massive proportions with the advent of school choice, which permits parents to choose the school they want their child to attend and get bus service. The district uses a computer program to lay out bus routes and stops, but it can't "see" the conditions that surround each bus stop.
Human beings should check out all bus routes and stops, but either the transportation department doesn't employ enough people or it just doesn't care. With so many students to transport and too few buses, the district seems most intent on just keeping the buses rolling, preferably along the shortest route from Point A to Point B.
Bus drivers say district transportation officials had an unwritten policy that middle school and high school children were old enough to cross multilane roads by themselves. Two dead children prove them wrong. Every day, Pinellas students are crossing roads that smart adults would not tackle.
New Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox has a lot on his plate as he takes the reins of the district Nov. 1. Everything else pales beside the necessity of righting what is wrong with the district's transportation system. Lives truly do depend on it.
