MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Monongalia County Board of Education is prepared to consider creating a new bus line for students who live out in the Stewarts Run Road area.
The motion to prepare options to address students who are reported to live over a 30-minute walk from the Moose Lodge bus stop for students in that area was supported unanimously by the BOE during the regular meeting Wednesday night. Board Member Christina Fattore Morgan made the initial call to consider all options on the table, which includes possibly establishing a single bus line for the three students who have to walk over a mile from their home to the bus stop on roadways that were almost unanimously considered unsafe for travel by foot by the BOE.
“I think we should add another bus, we try to get a retiree or somebody from the sub list,” said Board Member Daniel Berry, supporting the call to add a bus line. “All parents, I don’t think any of us would want our children to walk that distance, those are hazardous (based on) those pictures you took.”
For the board members that were more vocal in trying to find an alternative option for transportation, the consideration of adding an entirely new bus route was endorsed based on making personal treks out to the western part of the county, located more than a 10-minute drive from the Morgantown Mall. Using picture evidence, Board Member Christina Fattore Morgan pointed out blind spot areas with no real room off the side of Little Indian Creek Road for people to walk without entering into a lane of traffic.
“I don’t think that it’s a question of convenience, it’s a question of safety,” said Fattore Morgan. “I would not allow my child to walk this route, I, as an adult, would not walk this route.”
According to Monongalia County School Superintendent Eddie Campbell, options were made available to the families of the three students who live around the Stewarts Run Road area who have to deal with the over half-hour walk to and from their homes to the Moose Lodge bus stop. This included options to be picked up from school and dropped off at Mylan Park before being picked up and taken to a spot closer to their home. With that option not considered ideal, the final option without drastically affecting multiple routes for dozens of students is to create a new line entirely.
“There’s no other way for us to make adjustments to the runs at this point in time, we can’t do it,” said Campbell. “The only thing we can do is to add and run a totally separate bus for those middle school and high school students.”
For the majority of the Mon County BOE, Campbell was requested to consider all options regarding supporting a new bus line for the three students in the Stewarts Run Road area. This includes options to potentially include them on a route where they are part of a similar location, where several minutes of route time would be added to account for the students’ distance of travel. Keeping in mind the potential impact on the Monongalia County Schools Transportation Department that is just matching position quotas despite hiring concerns in years past, veteran board members also advised on opening a potential ‘Pandora’s Box’ in approving a whole bus for three students.
“We’ve been through this years ago where you change this a little bit, move it to 15 minutes, and now I’ve got Dan Berry (as an example of a staff member) saying, ‘Wait a minute, I was set up to drive and drop this off,'” said Monongalia County School Board President Mike Kelly. “So we have to be real careful about how we do it.”