Letter: Avoid long bus rides for kids

Talk about it

Transporting young children across district school boundaries is inefficient, and costly, wasting taxes the public has entrusted our school board to use responsibly. Continuing with the status quo is suspect to justifying budgets rather than doing what is best for our children. It is deplorable to put a young child on a bus for a lengthy and, in some instances, a 40-minute, bus ride. Most adults spend less time commuting to work. What makes even less sense is that many of these children reside within walking distance of a neighborhood school.

A task force was developed to review these boundaries, and, thereafter, guiding principals evolved.

These principles are:

Keep Neighborhoods Together

Efficient and Safe Transportation

Planning for Future Growth

Contiguous Boundaries

As developed by the task force, the plans that benefit the district and the taxpayer the most, and are genuine to the guiding principles, are the Red or Blue plans. These plans keep children at their neighborhood schools. For example, keeping W-40 kids at an eastern school makes sense; as the population grows south and east of Bailey Elementary, there will be space at Bailey for growth. Furthermore, minimizing costly busing programs is both environmentally and financially responsible.

Any proposal should be fair, equitable and congruent to every neighborhood. No neighborhood should be treated better or worse than any other neighborhood.

The public demands more from our elected officials. The School Board was not elected to do the easy work. The Board needs to build boundaries for the future. Passing the buck and the White plan is the path of least resistance and would be inequitable. This plan would only keep the status quo and pass the difficult decision to future board members.

Board members . . . . lead, don’t follow! Earn the trust voters recently placed in your hands and do what is best for the district and all of the communities.

R.M. Strande

Woodbury

Tags: opinion, school, bus, boundaries