Bus rules unfair to younger children

Source: Albuquerque Journal, N.mini storageM.Aug. 27--Albert Roberts calls it age discrimination.His 6-year-old daughter can ride the school bus from their home just south of Madrid to Turquoise Trail Charter School, but her 4-year-old sister, who attends a pre-kindergarten class at the same school, can't.Because school districts are only funded to transport K-12 students, little Laney hasn't been allowed to board the bus with her sister."I'm not asking for anything special. I'm not asking for an extra bus or for them to change their bus route," Roberts said. "This should be about providing not only an education for our children, but a safe means of transportation. Instead, it's become an issue about age discrimination."The school district says it's not about that at all. It's about funding, liability and fairness."There are a number of factors that need to be looked into," said Latifah Phillips, chief of staff for Santa Fe Public Schools. "Is there a cost? Are there liabilities? We need to study the problem to see if we can provide a solution."We're not against it," she continued, "if we can find a solution that's zero cost and zero liability."According to a spokesman for the state's Public Education Department, school districts receive funding to transport K-12 students and pre-K students with disabilities. Whether other pre-K students can ride the bus is up to the district.Phillips said SFPS does provide transportation to pre-K special needs students at the Nye Early Childhood Center, for which it receives funding, but it gets no money to transport any other pre-K students.Phillips said the district wants a solution that's fair."If we're going to provide transportation for pre-K, it has to be something we can provide across the board," she said, adding that "across the board" doesn't mean the same for every student. "In this case, we'd be looking at children in the same situation."Roberts doesn't understand why the schools don't already provide transportation to pre-K students."If they provide early schooling, then they need to provide (transportation) for everybody," he said. "This doesn't just affect my kid, it affects my friends' kids, it affects my neighbors' kids. There needs to be a policy, and it should include all the kids."David Perez, transportation director for SFPS, said the district follows the policy that is spelled out in state statutes."We want to be fair. What we do for one, we want to be able to offer that same thing for every single child," he said.The statute defines a "qualified rider" as someone who is 5 years old by Sept. 1 of the current school year, but there are stipulations beyond that.Forself storageexample, a qualified rider weighing less than 50 pounds is required to be secured in a restraining device. Only SFPS buses that transport special needs students are equipped with those, he said.Perez said SFPS is already operating under a tight budget and transportation costs can be "extremely variable," largely due to fuel costs.The solution isn't as simple as finding money in the transportation department's $3.5 million budget. The money comes from the state and every line item must be accounted for and used for a specific purpose, he said.Perez acknowledged that other districts, Rio Rancho among them, provide transportation for pre-K students."Those that do obtain grants or have proprietary money for that," he said. "What I've been tasked to do is to look into how we can do that next year."Roberts doesn't want to wait until next year. By then, his youngest daughter will be 5 and eligible to ride the bus.So he's has taken his complaint all the way to the governor's office, which referred him to PED, which referred him back to the school district.He's spoken to the transportation director, his school board representative and finally met with Superintendent Joel Boyd last Friday.While Roberts said the district told him they need time to work out a solution, he has become increasingly frustrated."I understand that things don't happen overnight," he said. "But I don't understand why things have to be like this in the first place. We're at the bottom of the pile for being the most illiterate state in the union. If we can get these kids in school earlier, then they have a better chance."For now, Roberts is shuttling both his children to and from school each day, which he says requires three 30-mile round trips each day. He takes the older daughter in early each morning, the younger one in at about 11:30 a.m. for her pre-K class and then picks them both up at 2:45 p.m.He could let his first-grader take the bus, but refuses to do so."I can't let one ride the bus and deny the other," he said. "How do I explain that to the children? Your sister's special and can ride the bus, but you can't?"Roberts said if other school districts allow pre-K students to ride the bus, Santa Fe should do the same."If the child is old enough to go to school, then that child should be entitled to all the benefits that the other children are entitled to," he said. "I just want my daughter to have an education and the same opportunities as everybody else."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at .abqjournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉