School board must address busing issues
To the editor:
This letter is intended to inform people of the problems that we are facing here in Lee County, Florida with busing and our school board not addressing the problem at hand.
Many of our children have four to five hours on a school bus in a day. Some are standing outside early in the morning when it is dark out, and other children with long bus rides home can not participate in after school activities and/or sports, which is something the American Board of Education recommends.But wait, there is more. Some of these children have to try and cram in the homework as well which, in turn, leaves little family time, which is sparse in this economy as it is already.
Many experts have agreed that good, quality family time is essential to a child’s proper development.
There is also the physical effects of this problem. The length of time these children are on the school bus, and exposed to high amounts of diesel fumes, is extremely detrimental to their health. I will include notes from a research done on this as well.
Many parents have brought this to the school board’s attention. This is not a problem that has just now developed over the past few months, this has been an ongoing issue for quite some time now. There has been news reports on local media stations, and in the local paper of these issues. The school board has still overlooked this problem, and seems to be ignoring the issues and concerns of parents, and of local citizens. The school board has been presented with e-mails and articles of these complaints. They have been informed that there is a forum group on Face Book, dedicated to this problem, exclusively. For reference the name of the page is Lee County Florida School Bus Problem. They have been asked to join the group, just to discuss the issues in a non-formal way, and have been confronted in school board meetings by parents about these problems, and still refuse to come up with a resolution. I, myself, have emailed them several times with no response, with the exception of one board member, Bob Chilmonik. Now I am asking for outside help to resolve this. I realize there is no quick solution, but there is a solution out there somewhere.To sum it up, we need help with this out-of-control school board.
Don H. Armstrong
Lehigh Acres