BENTONVILLE -- Lochmoor Club subdivision residents showed up at Tuesday's School Board meeting seeking reversal of a decision to eliminate busing from their neighborhood.
Families learned this month the School District would no longer offer transportation between Lochmoor Club and Willowbrook Elementary, Bright Field Middle and Fulbright Junior High schools, though the district agreed to provide busing for the first two weeks of the school year to give families a chance to adjust to the change.
The district has provided busing to Lochmoor for 15 years, said Lou Rhuda, president of the Property Owners Association.
Leslee Wright, director of communications for the School District, said before the board meeting the decision to eliminate busing for Lochmoor Club was made over the summer break. District officials saw more sidewalks being built between Lochmoor Club and the schools as builders continue to develop the area, Wright said.
"We realized that it's something that our families could use if they chose to do so, so we could allocate our resources as far as buses and bus drivers more efficiently," Wright said.
Willowbrook, Bright Field and Fulbright schools each are roughly a mile from Lochmoor Club via Southwest Edinburgh Avenue. The district typically doesn't provide transportation for students who live within a mile of their school.
But most of the 10 people who addressed the issue at Tuesday's meeting argued children don't have a safe route to school because of another subdivision under construction along the Edinburgh route.
"Our days, our mornings are filled with concrete trucks, dump trucks, contractors," Rhuda said. "There's not a continuous sidewalk on either side of the road to get to school."
Marie Huthwaite and Sara McKay used iPads to show board members video of the traffic along the route. Beth Amidei, another Lochmoor resident, said she has four children, including three who attend Willowbrook, Bright Field or Fulbright. She said she couldn't imagine the district expecting a child to negotiate the walk down Edinburgh Avenue every day.
"In the past the teachers have encouraged the parents to let their kids ride the bus," Amidei said. "It helps to alleviate the car pool line, and it takes 20 minutes to load the bus and get all the kids home safely."
Buffington Homes is building homes along the Edinburgh Avenue route. Jake Helton, president of Buffington Homes, told the board it's "unbelievably unsafe" to have kids walking there. Material such as lumber and brick are delivered early in the morning to the work sites, the same time kids would be walking to school, he said.
"It scares the ever-loving dickens out of me that I'm going to have all of those kids walking through there," Helton said.
Board members didn't respond directly to the Lochmoor residents' comments, though board Vice President Matt Burgess, who lives in Lochmoor Club, said the district failed when it came to communicating its decision to families.
"If we make a decision that affects families, especially something as important as transportation, we should tell you that," Burgess said.
The district apologized for not notifying families sooner, Wright said.
Superintendent Debbie Jones seemed unwilling to back down from the district's decision, which she said represented an effort to be consistent districtwide in applying its one-mile, no-transport zone practice.
"As we grow, we have to think about the equity of the whole district," Jones said. "While it's very difficult, and we understand they have had transportation for a long time, it's just an effort to try to be fair to all of our families in the district. And we plan to move forward with being equitable."
NW News on 08/21/2019