The start of the 2025-2026 school year brought a sudden change in busing access for at least 62 Floral Park Memorial High School families, which students and parents have responded to with legal action.
Parents’ legal appeals challenging the Sewanhaka Central High School District’s decision to use a new bus mapping software, called TransFinder, have yet to be successful. The revised software has determined that their children, who have not moved, no longer live the minimum 1.5 miles from the school required to qualify for bus service
Parent Celena Ditchev said her appeal to the New York State Board of Education is still pending, but her request and at least one other parent’s request for an emergency stay of the district’s decision or temporarily reinstated bus service while the new routes are being challenged was denied with no reason given.
“It was kind of shocking to me, this being my first interaction with the state Board of Education appeals, that an emergency stay can be decided without any reasoning,” Ditchev said. “There was nothing other than notification of it being denied. No basis, no reasoning. Someone with time could probably challenge that as well.”
Sewanhaka said in a statement that there has been “no decrease in bus allocation at Floral Park Memorial.”
“Bus numbers are determined by student eligibility and eligibility requirements have not changed,” the statement continued.
The software used to determine eligibility has changed and Superintendent Regina Agrusa has said at public meetings that 62 families have been affected.
Ditchev said a handful of other parents have also filed appeals to the state Board of Education, all of which remain pending. She said impacted families are working together to get their children, all of whom live 1.5 miles away from the school according to other mapping software, like Google Maps, and must cross Jericho Turnpike on their walk to and from school safely.
“It’s a lot of parents connecting with other people and trying to make sure you get your child to school and that they have a way back from school,” Ditchev said. “Parents are working, and they’re not necessarily home for that, so it’s tough.”
Parents have also expressed concerns over their children’s safety when walking to school. The district has directed many students to cross at the triangle-shaped intersection of Emerson Avenue, Plainfield Avenue, and Jericho Turnpike, which the Floral Park Village board has called a “dangerous” intersection.
The Sewanhaka Board of Education has asked the village to place crossing guards at Jericho Turnpike intersections to support students who are crossing. Floral Park Mayor Kevin Fitzgerald said plans to do so are in the works.
Fitzgerald said the village and school district are still finalizing the agreement, and he does not yet know when the guards will be installed. If the agreement works out as it currently stands, he said the district would pay for two crossing guards hired by the village, and they would likely be stationed at Willis Avenue and Jericho Turnpike and Holland Avenue and Jericho Turnpike.
Ditchev and other parents have said they “don’t understand” how the district could determine they no longer live 1.5 miles or more away from the school and don’t qualify for busing after most of them have been provided busing for over five years.
“We’ve always qualified, and it’s been the same distance,” said another parent who was told he and his kids now live 1.46 miles away from the school. “It just seems bizarre that now there’s a new way of measuring, and it’s saying we’re .04 miles too close.”
Parents say the district is measuring to the closest school entrance from their homes, which, for this group of families, is an entrance on Bellerose Street that they say had rarely been used as an entrance.
Ditchev said the school recently sent out a message telling kids not to lock their bikes to the fence by that entrance and to ensure they are placed in the bike racks, on the other side of the building, which elongates their walk.
“It was never intended for them to enter at Bellemore Street,” Ditchev said. “That’s why I’m saying the whole thing is just so curious. It doesn’t remain open. You need staff to open it up. There’s no guarantee that the side door is open…[The bike issue] goes to the fact that they never intended to use this as an entrance, and really weren’t using it as such until they decided to draw these new routes.”
It is unclear when the state Board of Education will decide on the parents’ appeals.
