| News - Wednesday, July 5, 2006
A bid for busing
Parents want school-bus route changed to shorten trip for elementary-school kids, offer service to Gunn students
by Alexandria Rocha
Although the Palo Alto school district turned them down last year, the parents and community members who want a better bus route for Nixon Elementary School students living in Stanford West are back.
The group, known as the Stanford Area Families Bus Group, submitted a proposal to the school district last summer that would have reconfigured its "J" bus route, shortening the 40-minute ride Stanford West students have to school each morning and also allowing Gunn High School students who live on the university's campus to use the service.
The district rejected the group's proposal in December 2005, citing several reasons, including student supervision, inequity and a rule not to transport high school students.
But with school now out for the summer, members of the group are rallying for the proposal again. Supporters say 40 minutes is too long of a ride for elementary children, and bicycling to school is not always an option for Gunn teenagers. Parents also say their proposal would reduce traffic congestion around Gunn, encourage the use of public transportation, increase student safety, and help fight global warming.
"The time to have changes made to bus schedules is during the summer when things aren't operating," said Martha Bowden, a Gunn and Terman Middle School parent who supports the group's proposal. "The little kids sitting on the bus that long is just unacceptable."
The current "J" bus route picks up Nixon students who live in Stanford West, a residential community on the northwest side of Stanford, at 7:15 a.m. and doesn't drop them off at Nixon until 7:55 a.m., although the most direct route is only two and one-half miles.
On the way to Nixon, the "J" stops at Gunn and Terman. Last year, about 40 students total from all three schools routinely road the "J."
The bus group is proposing a schedule members think would suit everybody's needs better and even make the district some extra cash. Their route would pick students at Stanford West up at 7:20 a.m. and head straight to Nixon school, with a drop off time for the little ones of 7:40 a.m.
Gunn students who live on the Stanford campus could then hop on the "J" bus once the Nixon students disembark, paying a fee to ride. The bus would then head to Gunn and Terman. There is currently no busing provided for Gunn students who live on the university's campus.
"The school bus situation in Palo Alto is inadequate," said Philip Wong, a parent of an incoming Gunn freshman, who lives on Stanford's campus and spoke to the school board about the issue last week. "We used to live in New York and busing was offered everywhere by law. The bus would stop in front of each kindergartner's home. Here you have to ask parents to drive two blocks away. That's highly inadequate."
Parents in similar situations as Wong say it is too dangerous and not always feasible for their Gunn students to bicycle to school everyday. Sometimes the students have projects or musical instruments to carry or the weather does not permit riding a bike.
"It was too far away for (my son) to walk with a super-heavy backpack. Riding a bike, he would have to ride across Page Mill, Foothill, Arastradero," said Lily Hsueh Suan, referring to her son who recently graduated from Gunn.
Hsueh Suan has a son attending Terman who will be at Gunn in a year, so she supports the group's changes to the bus route.
The key factor for school officials is the extra five minutes Nixon students would be on campus if the bus route was reconfigured. By law, the school district is not required to start the day's on-campus student supervision until 7:45 a.m., which is before the current "J" bus arrives.
Under the group's proposal, the bus would arrive at 7:40 a.m. Supporters say they have parents who are ready and willing to volunteer as supervisors for the five minutes. The proposal also suggests that their volunteers would in turn be supervised by Nixon teachers who arrive early.
"If you just change something by five minutes, it's not as little of a thing as it appears," said Jerry Matranga, the district's business manager. "The teachers are there preparing for instruction."
The district also took issue with increasing the amount of busing it offers high-school students. The Palo Alto district does not transport high-school students as a general rule because of the limited amount of space, officials said, which is reserved for elementary-school children.
"Routes are not changed for the purpose of increasing high school ridership," wrote Matranga in a letter to the group in December 2005, rejecting its proposal.
Busing, in fact, has never been one of the Palo Alto school district's major offerings. Kathy Durkin, the district's director of transportation, said there are nine bus routes, but she did not know the total number of students using the service. She said the district scaled back its busing dramatically in the early 1990s when education funding was cut across California.
The district also turned the group's initial proposal down because it would, according to the letter, "create equity issues at other schools related to the amount of time elementary students spend on the bus, supervision on the elementary campuses before the start of school, and an increase in transportation for students at both Paly and Gunn."
Members of the group, however, are now working with Stanford officials to figure out an alternate solution. They hope the school district will, well, get on the bus.
"We're very open to talk to the representatives at Stanford. We never just close the door. That's not where we are," Matranga said. "It's more in terms of what is realistic for us to be able to do something that's not going to ... distract us from our primary work in support of the students' education."
What do you think should be done about busing Stanford kids to school? Talk about the topic at Town Square on Palo Alto Online, www.PaloAltoOnline.com.
Staff Writer Alexandria Rocha can be e-mailed at arocha@paweekly.com. | 
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