Batavia schools trying to fix Pine Street busing issue
The Batavia school board hopes the state agrees that it is dangerous for elementary students to walk across Pine Street to get to school.
The board is trying to fix a problem made this summer, when information on having to cross Pine Street was left out of a school bus routing program. Parents of 55 children were notified by letter the second week of August that their children, who live within 1½ miles of J.B. Nelson Elementary School, would no longer have free bus service.
The parents protested to the board two weeks ago, asking what had changed about the standards or Pine and why they weren't notified earlier. E-mail news subscribers got the information the week before.
Tuesday, the board voted to ask the Illinois Department of Transportation to designate a section of Pine a hazardous route.
If IDOT does so, the students would be guaranteed busing, and the state would pay some of the $27,650 bill. If the state does not agree, parents may be asked to pay the costs, estimated at nearly $500 a rider per school year.
The district will provide busing until the end of October either way, according to Superintendent Jack Barshinger, who expects an answer from IDOT within 30 days. He says he's pretty confident IDOT will approve the request.
Pine has always been considered a dangerous route, Barshinger said. There are few sidewalks from Woodland Hills Road to Hart Road, the stretch students from the Davey Farms and The Knolls subdivision would be expected to use. The "major collector" road, as designated by the city, connects Kirk Road, a strategic regional arterial road, to Van Buren Street, a minor collector. There are few stop signs or crosswalks. About 518 vehicles per hour use the street, according to the school district.
So students who live south of Pine have been bused for years to Nelson. And the district received reimbursement for it from IDOT.
Problem is, the district had never actually gotten the route designated as hazardous by IDOT, so it wasn't included on a list of hazardous routes supplied to First Student, the company the district hires to bus students. And First Student converted from a manual to a computerized route-planning system this summer, but that system required operators to enter hazardous routes supplied by the district. So the software drew a 1.5-mile circle around Nelson School and kicked out students who lived within.
Board President Ron Link also noted that last year and this year, bus schedules have changed right up to the day before school starts, a frustrating thing for parents, students and administrators.
"It was a learning process for both First Student and the district," said First Student branch manager Marcy Murphy, who couldn't speak to last year's problems because she didn't work at the branch then. "These pains that we are having will be minimal next year."