By LARRY MAIER
Many parents have long been concerned for the safety of children who have to cross Sunrise Highway, and walk along other busy roads, to get to the Merrick Avenue and Grand Avenue middle schools. Areas designated as safety zones allow school districts to provide busing for students living within them without changing other busing requirements.
At the board meeting, Matt Rankel, a traffic engineer with Dunn
Engineering Associates in Westhampton, told administrators, trustees and a crowd of about 50 parents that none of the most direct routes to the middle schools from neighborhoods south of Sunrise Highway earned enough points in the state's scoring system to qualify as safety zones.
Though parents expressed frustration and anger with what they considered an antiquated system, many left the meeting with hope that something can still be done to make traveling to the middle schools, and possibly the high schools, safer.
That's because George Littman, Bellmore-Merrick's assistant superintendent of business, presented cost estimates of reducing the district's current transportation limit for middle-school students. At present, only students who live 1.5 miles or farther from their school receive busing. Littman's presentation showed the projected costs of reducing the limit to one mile, one-half mile and two-tenths of a mile.
According to Littman's statistics, reducing the middle-school transportation limit to one-half mile would require an additional 741 students be bused. Because some buses are now operating at less than full capacity, 584 additional bus seats would be required. This would mean contracting for 12 additional buses at an estimated cost of $497,000 a year.
Littman also said the school district would lose about $55,000 a year in state funding because the cutoff for state transportation aid is 1.5 miles.
When the numbers are crunched, reducing the middle-school transportation limit to one-half mile would mean a $0.31 tax increase per $100 of a home's assessed value. For a home with an assessed value of $7,500, that comes an additional $23.25 in school taxes per year.
Many parents said they thought district residents would support a school tax hike for the additional busing. The chance to vote on changing the transportation limit is what some parents have hoped for all along, said Mark Schwartz, whose daughter will attend Merrick Avenue Middle School next year.
"I think they did a diligent job putting the numbers together, and I was very pleased with the outcome of the meeting," said Schwartz. "In some form, it sounds like it's going to happen."
Denise Malderelli, who submitted a petition to the school board last May requesting safety zones be established for all students living south of
Sunrise Highway, was also pleased with the board's response.
"I felt very positive about the board; they're not sitting on this," said Malderelli. "They didn't say no, and they weren't ruling anything out."
At the meeting's end, the school board asked the district's administration to complete an analysis of the costs of changing transportation limits for the district's three high schools as well, and to present their findings at the January board meeting.
Meanwhile, Schwartz said, residents might draft a proposal of their own, just in case the board comes back in January and decides not to advance a transportation-limit change.
As another fallback position, Schwartz said that residents would request a copy of the engineer's report. Schwartz said he and others are not convinced of its validity.
"I think there are a lot of inaccuracies and a lot of subjective opinion in [Rankel's] interpretation of the point system," Schwartz said.
Setting limits
While the half-mile transportation limit would provide busing across
Sunrise Highway for all students attending Merrick Avenue Middle School, it would not for students at Grand Avenue Middle School or Elizabeth Seton
School in Bellmore. Public school districts are required by law to provide busing to parochial schools as well.
To bus all of those students across Sunrise Highway, the transportation limit would need to be reduced to two-tenths of a mile, requiring an estimated tax increase of $30 a year for a house with an assessed value of $7,500.
And those costs are only for middle schools. If district high schools were added to the equation, the costs and tax increase would be higher.
Superintendent Dr. Thomas Caramore said that since the Nov. 9 meeting, district staff have measured the distances from Sunrise Highway to its three high schools. The distance from Kennedy High School to Sunrise Highway is 1.3 miles and from Calhoun the distance is 1.1 miles. No Mepham High School students are now required to cross Sunrise Highway.
The district could legally set one transportation limit for middle schools and another for high schools, said Caramore, who added that he personally doesn't see the need to change the high-school busing requirements.
"Honestly, if a 17 or 16 year old can't cross Sunrise Highway, I've got a real problem with that," said Caramore. "But the board has a right to do what they want to do, so we'll provide them with the information, and they may or may not ask me for recommendation."
Many parents said they thought that including the high schools in the busing change is necessary and makes sense. "What's the difference between a
12-year-old and a 13-year-old?" asked Malderelli. "We'd like to encompass everybody."
Schwartz also favors including the high schools, but not at the expense of the middle schools.
"I don't want to see us lose the middle schools because they are deliberating the high-school proposal," Schwartz said.
Board Vice President Alyse Middendorf said the school board's challenge will be to look at the new data the administration will compile for January and decide what, if any, transportation-limit proposition to put on the May ballot.
Any proposition drafted should be "informed, well written and not something that is going to be onerous to the entire community," Middendorf said.
