Mom presses schools to solve bus problem
When she finds her three kids would have to walk a dangerous route to school, she calls and gets officials to review and change plans.
By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published July 29, 2005
CLEARWATER - With a kindergartener, second-grader and fourth-grader heading to Lake St. George Elementary School next week, Jacqueline Ryan wants to see that big yellow bus in her Curlew City neighborhood.
But at breakfast-time Thursday, the Pinellas County School District had dropped her street from its routes this year. No bus was planned for Curlew City, meaning an estimated 60 neighborhood kids were looking at crossing eight lanes of traffic on Curlew Road at U.S. 19, she said.
"They've always had a bus up until this year," said Ryan, 25, a stay-at-home mom. "What about safety? I can't comprehend it."
So she started calling around. By lunch, school transportation officials had changed their plans.
"We're going to put buses there and pick up that neighborhood because we feel that Curlew Road warrants it," said Anthony J. Dzielski, the district's acting director of transportation services. "We're going to take care of it."
After two student deaths last year, student safety and transportation loom as critically important issues for Pinellas school administrators this year.
Rebecca McKinney, a junior at Clearwater High, was struck and killed in October as she tried to cross McMullen-Booth Road after leaving a school bus. In February, Brooke Ingoldsby, a third-grade student at James B. Sanderlin Elementary in St. Petersburg, was killed while trying to cross Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street N after a school bus dropped her off.
Both died after being let off in violation of a district directive that students not be assigned to stops that force them to cross major roads. An investigation found hundreds of routes in violation of the policy. Under pressure, Dzielski's predecessor resigned to take a similar job in another county.
So this year, Dzielski said, transportation officials re-evaluated all of the routes. In doing so, however, some problems like Ryan's slipped through.
Ryan's home on 298th Avenue N, just south of Curlew Road, is within 2 miles of the school, she was told, so school transportation officials did not put the street on a bus route for Lake St. George Elementary.
Under school district policy, students can ride the bus when their homes are more than 2 miles from school, and elementary school students are provided transportation if they have hazardous walking conditions, as defined by state law, going to or from school.
What likely happened, Dzielski said, was that state officials had not flagged Curlew as a hazardous road, and the school district bus router who handled Curlew City this year might not have been as familiar with the neighborhood as his or her predecessor.
So 298th Avenue, which is within the 2-mile limit, did not automatically pop up as an area with a safety issue, he said.
But once school officials heard of Ryan's complaint and talked to the principal at Lake St. George Elementary, they realized they needed to make a change, he said.
As Pinellas schools get ready to open next week, transportation officials are working through many such issues. On Friday, the district's transportation hotline took 1,000 calls.
"We've got a call center and people are calling in and there are a lot of issues and we know we've got a lot of issues," Dzielski said. ". . . If we think (a situation is) going to jeopardize the kids, we'll do what we need to do to make it a safe environment for the kids."
That's good, said Ryan, but she contends the district needs better communication on such issues. What, she wonders, would have happened if she hadn't called?
"It would have stayed fallen through the cracks," she said.
BUS PROBLEMS?The Pinellas County School District's transportation call center is 727 587-2020. Parents also can use the district's Web site, http://edulog.pinellas.k12.fl.us/ edulog/webquery/, to find out where and when their children can catch the bus.