Many students forced out onto busy town streets
Published on June 17th, 1998
STONEHAM, MA - Stoneham schools are sure to feel a sharp pinch in the next school year due to the budget cuts totalling over $1 million which were approved by the School Committee last Thursday.
Three areas received the most concentration and the largest reduction: transportation ($85,680), supplies (over $100,000) and maintenance (five positions, over $150,000).
The transportation line item will result in immediate impact next year. Only about 10 students in Stoneham will receive School Department-funded bussing. These few students must receive transportation due to the fact that they reside more than two miles from their respective schools.
All other students, however, will have to find alternate transportation, a fact which does not sit well with many parents.
"My first reaction was disbelief because I knew that things would be cut, but I had no idea that (busing) would be totally eliminated," said Stoneham resident Joan Kaiser Kerrigan of her experience at last Thursday's meeting. "Also, I felt totally betrayed."
Kerrigan said she had supported the School Department's $40 million school building project with her vote at Town Meeting with the notion that the town was taking a large step in supporting education.
The cut of busing changed her mind.
"It seemed like they were pulling the rug out from underneath us," Kerrigan said. "We voted for their schools and then they just turned their backs on us.
"If I had known this kind of thing was going to happen, I never would have voted for the schools."
Although Kerrigan's situation for the upcoming school year is extreme (she will have three children attending three different schools), she says that she has heard similar sentiments from other parents.
"It's just impossible," she says of her transportation dilemma for the upcoming school year. "There's no way I'd be able to get all her kids to school on time)."
Kerrigan also said she resented statements made by Vice Chairperson Jeanne Craigie at the meeting.
Craigie told the large gathering that "buses are machines" and the education of children was of more importance.
"As uncomfortable as it is, the bus company does not live in Stoneham," she said. "I think the community has an obligation to get the kids to school.
"Get the kids to the curb and we'll take care of them."
Kerrigan said, "It just seemed like it was decided and that was the end of it. How can you not care about how kids get to school?"
In addition, South School Elementary School students will be relocated to the High School next year due to reconstruction.
This, in addition to an influx of high schoolers, will increase pedestrian traffic on Franklin Street, she said; a roadway with existing safety concerns.
"I don't even like walking that street as an adult," Kerrigan stated. "Will (Craigie) not care is somebody gets hit and sues the town?"
She explained that parent will try to organize privately funded buses to get children to and from school in a safe manner.
Kerrigan said that her son, who was attending South School, was relocated by the School Department, without her input, to the Robin Hood School. She accepted this obstacle due to the fact that busing was being provided.
Now that busing has been taken away, the relocation becomes an even larger issue..
"My kids aren't going to get anything out of it at all except have everything disrupted," Kerrigan said.
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