Dist. 15 takes closer look at bus routes

Hundreds of complaints from parents have prompted officials at Palatine Township Elementary District 15 to look closer into the new bus route system put in place this year.

In an emergency vote Wednesday night, school board members unanimously approved spending up to $25,000 to hire TransPar Group, a school bus consulting company.

The hope is that an outside firm can look at the district's busing issues and come up with recommendations to improve routes, officials say.

This year, the district changed school start-times to either 7:55 or 8:45 a.m. This whittled the previous four-tier bus system down to two-tiers.

After a few weeks of school, parents are complaining their children are on the buses too long, arriving late to school and that the rides are out of the way.

Several parents criticized the new system Wednesday and one substitute bus driver said she sees "challenges and problems every day."

Parent Teri Havansek has an eighth-grader at Sundling Junior High. The school is six minutes away from her house, yet the bus ride is taking 40 minutes each way.

"This is not efficient," she said. "This was a rushed, uninformed decision-making process."

Dianne Novosad has a 4-year-old special needs student who attends Conyers Learning Academy in Rolling Meadows. She says her son gets home more than an hour-and-a-half after school ends. Often, he and others sleep in the hallway at the school because they have to wait 40 minutes for a bus to come.

"Everyone knew we were in for a challenge," said George Lingel, District 15's interim assistant superintendent. "We know that we need changes and modifications."

He said recommendations are expected from the consulting group within the next two to three weeks.

"A second set of eyes would be helpful," said board member Wendy Rowden.

Still, parents are frustrated, and some say the plan was rushed.

"There was a public outcry against this last year and the board still went ahead with it," said Havansek. "If they had taken more time for fact-finding, the district could have saved this money on the consultant."

Parent Ronda Bischoff said she's calculated that her daughter is arriving 15-25 minutes late to school every day -- resulting in her already missing 1½ days of school in 13 days,

"There's urgency to correcting these issues," she said.

Lingel said the transportation department is doing the best it can and has answered hundreds of phone calls on the issue.

Parents are being asked to fill out a survey about how the new bus schedule is working at www.ccsd15.net.