With school starting on Monday, some parents in Levy County are not happy with their new bus routes. Parents believe their childrens' safety is at risk. Unpaved roads, speeding, and sexual predators are among their concerns. The school board has consolidated bus routes throughout the county to cut costs to transportation, rather than to education. The new routes will have students walking 4 to 5 blocks at most, but parents say that's 4 to 5 too many.
Morriston mother of three, Tasha Whitt, says her kids will have to walk .9 miles to get picked up.
Whitt says, "in my mind I should feel my kids safety at school and on the bus on the way to the bus stop on the way home, and at this point it's where I would rather keep my kids home then put them in anybody else's care."
Patrick Wnek is director of curriculum for Levy County Schools. He says the kids safety is their number one priority, but they need parent's understanding in having to cut costs somewhere.
Wnek says, "we looked at all of our bus routes to determine ways to find savings and where we had buses running into neighborhoods we had four or five different routes going in it's to consolidate those routes and consolidate the pickup areas."
With seven routes eliminated and consolidating others, Levy County Schools saved about a hundred thousand dollars.
As for Whitt, she plans to drive her children to their bus stop Monday morning.