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Monday, Aug. 04, 2008

PARENTS, NOT BUSES, CALLED ON TO HAUL STUDENTS

Editor's note: This story was published in the Lexington Herald-Leader on Dec. 9, 2005. For transportation to games outside Fayette County, many teams at all five public high schools depend on parents -- not the school district's yellow buses.

The district does not provide transportation for extracurricular activities. Booster clubs, which pay most sports expenses, and coaches say they don't have the money for school buses. Instead, team members routinely pile into parents' cars and vans.

Superintendent Stu Silberman was alarmed when he learned about that practice from a reporter this fall. In Daviess County, where Silberman worked before coming to Lexington in 2004, students are not allowed to ride to school activities with anyone other than their own parent or legal guardian.

In Fayette County, parents may drive other students, as long as their parents have been notified by the coach that transportation is not being provided by Fayette County and is not covered by the district's insurance. School district policy requires parents to sign travel permission forms if teams use school buses for away games. However, written permission is not required for the car pools.

The practice worries Silberman, who said school buses are the safest form of transportation.

He isn't the only one concerned about safety.

"I went to every game holding my breath and crossing my fingers that we'd get the kids there and back safely," said Jan Ulmer, who coached Tates Creek girls' basketball last year.

To use buses, teams have to pay the district $1.15 a mile plus $20 for every hour. It adds up.

The Lafayette football team spent $5,600 on school buses last season. The band spent more on school buses and charter buses for overnight trips. Just to take the more than 200 band members downtown for the Christmas parade, a trip of less than three miles, the boosters paid $700.

For every student who qualifies for free and reduced lunch, the district allocates $3.62 each year to help pay for buses for sports. But it's not enough, even at schools like Bryan Station, where 53 percent of students qualify.

Some teams rent buses from churches or charter companies. Large groups, like band and football, take Fayette County school buses. But many teams depend on parents.

Carpooling is an added burden, said Terri Hunt, treasurer for the Dunbar softball boosters. Parents have to get off work early, load up their cars with players and equipment and then try not to get lost.

Karen Huff's 17-year-old daughter plays soccer and softball for Bryan Station and rides with other parents to games.

"I don't particularly like my kids' having to drive with people when I don't really know how they drive," Huff said. But if she drove her daughter, she would have to leave work early and wouldn't be home to cook dinner for her other two children, who are 9 and 15.

Some coaches predict that the system won't change until there's an accident. Silberman said that the school board would address the issue, but did not say when.

But fixing the problem without funds from the district will be hard, said Jim Masters, who coached girls' basketball at Tates Creek two years ago.

If the district simply mandated that teams take buses, some girls' teams wouldn't have money to travel outside the county, he said.

"Then you'd have some major, major Title IX issues."