A group of 62 Floral Park Memorial High School families who had access to school busing last year don’t this year, Sewanhaka Superintendent Regina Agrusa said earlier this month.Parents have called the loss of bus access unexpected, frustrating and dangerous as students now must cross busy Jericho Turnpike on foot to get to school. Two spoke with Schneps Media LI, saying that the district determined that their children, who have lived in the same house and been served by school buses for years, were no longer eligible for the bus.
Parents like Keith Alvarado and Celena Ditchev said the district did not communicate the change to students or their families until they inquired as to why their children had not received a bus pass a few days before the start of the semester.
Sewanhaka Central High School District declined multiple requests for comment.
Alvarado said after his wife emailed the district asking why their daughter had not received her bus pass, the district said Alvarado’s family no longer lived 1.5 miles or more away from the school, the longstanding requirement for bus service, according to its new mapping software, TransFinder.
“I don’t understand,” said Alvarado, who was told his home was 1.46 miles away from Floral Park Memorial High School. “We’ve always qualified, and it’s been the same distance. It just seems bizarre that now there’s a new way of measuring, and it’s saying we’re .04 miles too close.”
Alvarado said his daughter, now in 10th grade, has been riding the bus since she began classes at Floral Park Memorial in 7th grade alongside her older brother, who graduated this past May and rode the bus all six years of his high school career.
Ditchev said her son also did not receive a bus pass despite receiving one in prior years as did her other, older children taking the bus from their home for the past six years. She said when she asked for more information on how the district calculated a route between her home and the school that was less than 1.5 miles, representatives only said they had relied on TransFinder.
“They were so lacking in transparency with the community, so much so that they didn’t even afford notice. No one was told,” Ditchev said. “And everything I use tells me it’s 1.5 miles. I’m a runner. I frequently run 1.5 miles there to the track.”
She said she is working to submit a formal appeal to the state Board of Education.
“I’ll assert that this is an arbitrary and capricious action by the district for several reasons, including lack of transparency and notice and a lack of consistency,” said Ditchev, an attorney. She also said she was uncertain whether the district had been legally permitted to alter the routes when they did, a concern she would also be including in her appeal.
Alvarado also wanted to submit an appeal, but when he asked the district how to do so, representatives told him they would send him a link, which they never did.
Ditchev and Alvarado both were told the district’s software is measuring from the property line of students’ homes to the property line of the nearest entrance to the school, which in their case is a side entrance with a gate on Bellemore Street. However, both said students don’t typically enter through that gate, and the nearest door is usually locked, meaning children still have to walk around to the further, main entrance, adding distance and time to the walk.
“It just seems like they’re looking for ways to disqualify people,” Alvarado said. “That’s not where the kids go into school. They go into the front of the school where security is.”
Both he and Ditchev were concerned not only about the additional time it now took their students to get to school but also about the danger involved in crossing the busy Jericho Turnpike intersection.
The district provided suggested walking routes to students, which for many include crossing at the intersection of Jericho Turnpike, Emerson Avenue and Plainfield Avenue, a sort of triangle-shaped corner. When school board members came before the Floral Park Village Board to ask trustees to place crossing guards there earlier this month, the mayor said it was unlikely the village would do so due to the dangerous nature of the intersection.
School and village board members discussed the potential for a guard to stand at a different intersection instead.
“It’s a dangerous intersection,” Ditchev said. “They have the audacity to ask that the village absorb whatever has to happen and to ask to put a crossing guard at some intersection unlikely to work out, because everyone says it’s so dangerous. Now they want to use another intersection that will no doubt cause these kids to be on a walking route that is beyond 1.5 miles…It’s an awful way of practicing.”
Floral Park Mayor Kevin Fitzgerald said the village’s Police Department has been assessing the logistics of potentially placing a crossing guard somewhere on Jericho Turnpike for the students, but has not yet decided if it will be possible for the village to do so.
Ditchev said her son had already been hit while riding his bike along the proposed walking route in a prior year, making her reluctant to allow him to bike the route again. Both she and Alvarado said it caused them stress knowing that their kids are frequently on the roughly 40-minute walk on Jericho Turnpike alone.
“I don’t love my daughter being on Jericho Turnpike,” Alvarado said. “She’s an athletic kid…but still, to walk a mile and a half takes at least half an hour or more.”
Both said they hope the district reconsiders its decision and reinstates the bus.
