Routing Problems Busing Exceptions Proving To Be Financial, Logistical Nightmare For Central Valley

The rules that dictate who walks and who rides Central Valley school buses are 13 years old, and they’re sagging under layers of exceptions.

Granted one by one over the years, busing exceptions are so common they’ve become not only a logistical headache for the school district but also a financial concern.

Most exceptions are due to parents’ worries for young children walking unsupervised in today’s world.

Ponderosa Elementary School has 20 non-conforming bus stops that have cropped up over the years. Sunrise Elementary School has 10 such bus stops. Those numbers are not unusual for the district’s 14 elementary schools. This year, 18 non-conforming stops were eliminated in an effort to regain control.

So, what are the rules? As written, they’re pretty simple.

Kindergartners walk to school if they live within three-quarters of a mile of their school. That’s road miles, not as the crow flies. Older kids walk if they live within a mile and a half. Exceptions may be made, according to Central Valley’s policy, for first- and second-graders who live beyond three-quarters of a mile if a lack of sidewalks makes walking dangerous. Other exceptions may be made “after careful consideration of the safety and well-being of the pupils and the needs of the district,” the policy reads. Beyond that, there’s no direction on when to accept or deny exceptions.

Many exceptions have crept in this way: A kindergarten-only bus stop is established. Parents ask that older brothers and sisters be allowed to ride along with the kindergartner. And, voila, the bus stop remains becomes permanent, even after the kindergartners have grown.

Once any bus stop goes in, even for temporary medical reasons, parents expect those stops to be permanent.

There are no absolute rules about how far a child is asked to walk from home to the bus stop.

Some parents worry about the distances.

Kim Leachman worries about her kindergartner walking to a bus stop on Mission. She voiced her concerns and received a letter from the district stating the policy.

“And they think it’s safe to have a kindergartner walk three-quarters of a mile? I’m sorry but it’s not. Not in today’s world,” Leachman says.

Rosemary Langdon worries that her asthma-prone son will have difficulties next year when he has to walk eight-tenths of a mile to South Pines Elementary from his day care.

But busing is also a dollars and cents issue.

“There are no transportation problems we could not solve with twice as many buses and twice as much money,” said Central Valley School District Superintendent Wally Stanley.

The district spends $2.3 million a year on busing. State taxes pay $1.1 million of that. The other $1.2 million comes from local taxes. District officials are reluctant to spend more at a time when state education reform and the push for smaller class sizes are swallowing every available dollar.

In fact, Central Valley is unusual in spending so much local money on busing.

An informal survey of 15 school districts in Eastern Washington found that most use the one-mile rule, which is all the state will pay for.

Spokane School District 81 and East Valley School District both bus only children who live more than a mile from school. West Valley School District, on the other hand, buses almost every schoolchild, no matter how short a ride it is to school. That’s because so many high-traffic roads, such as Interstate 90, Argonne and Trent, cross West Valley.

Central Valley School Board members were briefed on their own school bus difficulties at Monday’s regular meeting.

Board members listened to Debra Holmes, head of transportation, lay out the logistics that she and her crew work with.

“The hot issue is walking distance,” Holmes said.

Forty-nine buses transport roughly 3,000 children to and from school each day. Fifteen of those buses transport just special-needs children. But route makers schedule tightly knit trips for elementary, middle and high school children together through a busy day.

“Most parents are very understanding when I explain to them what’s involved,” Holmes said. A minority of parents continue to request exceptions, but those voices seem to get louder each year, she says. Out of every four requests, Holmes and her co-workers grant about one exception.

“I’m not a meanie all the time,” she says.

This year, another wrinkle was added. Several elementary schools now dismiss all students at the same time, rather than staggering an early dismissal for K-2 students and a later dismissal for third- through sixth-graders.

That’s added a whole new set of difficulties. Bus drivers can’t be two places at once. As drivers are finishing their middle school routes, elementary kids are waiting to be picked up.

Early in the school year, children at Ponderosa Elementary waited as long as 40 minutes for their bus ride home. Now, the target is for kids to wait no more than 20 minutes.

The children wait outside the school, grouped according to their bus for efficient loading, said Ponderosa Principal Karen Toreson. “They visit with each other. They talk. It’s worked out fine,” Toreson said.

More change is on the way. In 2002, the school district will shift ninth-graders to its new high schools. Sixth-graders will move to middle schools. Those changes will bring more stresses on the bus system.

This week, the school board directed Holmes to come up with proposed policy changes as well as a framework for handling exceptions.

“I do not want a budget impact,” said school board member Gary Hann. Other board members also said they aren’t interested in big changes to the walking distance.

“But we’re just starting to look at the issue,” said board Chairman Craig Holmes, later in the week. “Safety is one of the most important things…. We need community input.”

“You want to take each child and hand them to their parents,” Holmes said, “and there’s some point where you just can’t do that, fiscally.”

A progress report is expected for the board within a month or so.