Still not on the bus

By CHRIS CONROY

BETHEL — Since October parents in Smallwood have been fighting to change the bus route. Now, with the start of school right around the corner, there are few options left.

At the August 9 meeting of the Town of Bethel board, Roger Ballard, one of the parents involved in the dispute with the Monticello Central School District, updated the board on the district’s position.

“The school bus routes will not be changing,” Bethel parent Steve Morey reported. Reading a letter from the school district’s business office, he said that “one-way streets would be required” in order for the buses to return to the route the parents would like.

The preferred route would bring the busses through certain Smallwood roads that the school district has deemed unsafe for busses. Included are roads near Lafayette Street and Orange Avenue off of Pine Grove Road and West Oak and Sullivan Streets off of Sgt. Andrew Brucher Drive.

As a whole, the town board was against the idea of making the streets one way.

“I think the school board is giving the residents of Smallwood the shaft,” said board member Harold Russell. “It’s bad enough to give someone directions to a home when you can go both ways… but then to make them go out a different way… it’s confusing.”

“The residents of this town pay enough school taxes,” said board member Lyndon Lilley, “that the district can afford to put another mini-bus in [Smallwood].” Lilley said he feels sending a smaller bus into areas where the school district feels it is unsafe for a larger bus would solve the problem. The kids could be picked up at their doors and then brought to a central location and loaded onto the bigger bus.

Noting letters sent out by the town last month requesting the school board to reconsider its decision, Bethel Supervisor Allan Scott reiterated his feeling that something different had to be done. “Participation of the parents at the school board level needs to take place.”

In order to facilitate that interaction, the board plans on attending the next Monticello Central School Board meeting, scheduled for August 23. “If we can get on their agenda and we have the support of parents there,” Scott said, “I’m for it.” The regularly scheduled town board meeting has been rescheduled for Wednesday, August 22.

“If you want a school board to do something for you,” Russell, a former member of the Jeffersonville-Youngsville Central School Board, said, “you fill that room. When the back row fills up with parents [they start to get nervous and listen].”

If the planned show of solidarity does not sway the school board on the subject, the town promises to act in the best interest of the children.

“I’m just looking to get this situation resolved in the quickest possible way,” Morey said.