No buses for students within 3 miles of school

Getting their children safely to school is a major concern of some District 51 parents. They are the families affected by the district's new bus policy that goes into affect on Monday. 

"All parents are concerned and nobody knows what to do," concerned father Jay Nettleblad said. "That's the problem."
     

Some parents are spending the final week of their child's summer vacation making transportation arrangements to get them to school.
     

"When I pulled the bus schedule I'm looking at it and I'm searching for the bus stop or anyone closest to it and the closest one is over on 32 1/2 and E road," mother Sherrie Nettleblad said. 
     

"We used to have bus transportation to Mount Garfield Middle School however now as they say on their website, it's 1.6 miles so he falls in the cut," Jay said. 
     

District 51 is no longer busing student who live within three miles of their school. They say it will save them $600,000 in this years budget.

But parents with students attending Mount Garfield Middle School say it's unsafe to have their child walk along Highway 6.

"It's starting to get dark in the morning and they leave here at about 6:50 in the morning which it's still dark," Sherrie said. "And with it going to start getting cold for having them to walk and the roads getting slippery there's no telling what can happen to the kids walking."

"There are a lot of stupid people out there that don't drive as they should," 8th grade student Gage Nettleblad said. 

"We're talking about a lot of kids, there's two to three school buses in the area that this affects full of kids," Jay said. "So you're going to have 30-45 kids walking down Highway 6. And I would think that would be a safety issue."

Many parents say the district didn't give them enough notice of the changes, but they will figure out how to get their child to school on monday.

"The plan is the next door neighbor and I will be taking turns taking the kids to school," Sherrie said. "They'll have to wait there until my husband gets off or one of us get off work to pick them up."