Published: September 08, 2009 11:42 pm      

Greenup busing issue

Officials: Rule to be enforced for safety reasons

Lloyd — Middle school students in the Greenup County district will have to go to the school on their side of the county after Oct. 14 if they want to take the bus.

That was the decision of the school board Tuesday after it heard the report of a committee created to study busing issues.

Currently, parents may choose either Wurtland or McKell for their middle school children and send them there on the bus. But that arrangement came under board scrutiny for safety reasons, mainly that children were at risk because they have to take one bus to the high school and then change buses.

The school district is divided into two sub-districts for purposes of assigning middle school students. Those on the east side of the county are assigned to Wurtland and those on the west go to McKell.

Some families living near the dividing line, almost all of them on the McKell side, have been sending their children to Wurtland.

A number of the parents descended on the school board at its August meeting after learning the board was planning to end the practice.

The board backed off and instead created the committee, which voted unanimously to recommend sticking to the dividing line rule. Parents may still send their children to either middle school, but if they choose the one on the other side of the line they’ll have to provide transportation.

Allowing families to choose either school would be unsafe, logistically unwieldy, and in some cases illegal, according to committee member Verna Howell, who teaches at both middle schools.

The number of children changing buses makes the current practice unsafe, she said. Also, accommodating all the families that want to send their children across the county would require more bus runs, more changes, longer rides and earlier start times, she said.

Further, the number of families expressing interest in sending their children across the line had swollen from eight or so to more than 40, she said.

The committee recommended and the board agreed to wait until Oct. 15, the beginning of the next grading period, to enforce the rule, which according to transportation director Luther Grizzle has been on the books for a couple of years. That will give families time to arrange transportation, if they want to leave their child in a school across the line, or to make the switch at the beginning of the grading period, Howell said.

Howell and board chairman Jeff Hurn, who also was on the committee, said the members talked it over and mutually agreed the current practice is unsafe. But Brenda Wells, a parent member of the committee, remains upset. She took on the committee assignment thinking it would be discussing alternatives, but believes it amounted to little more than a rubber stamp. She cast her committee vote in favor of the Oct. 15 deadline, but said she felt she had little choice. “The decision was made up already.”

If necessary, Wells will abide by the rule, but plans to check at the state level whether those families currently sending children across the line may continue to do so under a grandfather clause.

Howell said she believes that would be illegal.