LONDONDERRY — School is officially out for the summer, and a Brookview Drive family is hoping to resolve their school bus woes before another year rolls around.

During Tuesday night's School Board meeting, local parents Carmen and Kyle Zavorotny implored the board to consider altering their son's bus route for the coming school year.

Located off South Road, Brookview Drive, a cul-de-sac, is about a half-mile from South Elementary School, where the couple's son will enter second grade this fall.

In a letter dated June 11, Carmen Zavorotny noted that at the beginning of this past school year, the district didn't provide busing for her young son. This concerned her, she said, due to the busy nature of South Road and the lack of a sidewalk.

“As safety requires people to walk on the left side of the roads, our son was required to cross South Road to walk to school in the morning and there were no crosswalks anywhere on South Road other than directly in front of South School,” she wrote. “Clearly, this situation wasn't safe for a 6-year-old child.”

After contacting Peter Curro, the district business administrator, the Zavorotnys were told that Brookview Drive children have always walked to school, and the policy couldn't be changed.

Dissatisfied with Curro's response, the family then contacted Superintendent Nathan Greenberg, who disagreed with Curro.

“The solution he came up with was to add a bus stop at the intersection of Brookview Drive and South Road,” said Zavorotny.

Though the couple suggested the bus might, instead, pick up their son in front of his Brookview Drive home, Greenberg declined that request.

“Our concern is that during the afternoon, the bus stops on the opposite side of South Road, meaning my son has to cross the street to get to Brookview Drive,” Kyle Zavorotny told the board Tuesday night. “We just don't feel this is safe. It seems to contradict the district's policy stating that children won't cross busy roads.”

This past April, the Zavorotnys noted that a substitute bus driver dropped off their son one afternoon and retracted the stop sign as her son began crossing South Road.

“Luckily my wife was able to run out and stop traffic but it could have been a worse situation,” said Kyle Zavorotny. “The simplest and easiest solution would be to have the bus come down Brookview Drive to our house.”

That solution may not be so simple.

As board member Leitha Reilly noted, sending a bus down Brookview Drive would ultimately mean the district could find itself responsible for transporting children down “every other street that's close to a busy, main street.”

“Would we have to do this for all the other schools, too?” she asked.

“The short answer is, yes,” Greenberg replied. “What we'd be creating is an issue with a road that's a short distance to the school. We'd be doubling the route so drop-offs are on the same side of the road.”

Such changes could prove expensive, he said, since the likely result would be the need for additional buses and longer bus routes.

School Board Policy EEA dictates, “For the safety of students, bus routes shall be established so that students shall not cross main roads to enter or leave their assigned buses.”

“Consistently, we do consider Mammoth Road a main road, where we don't allow kids to cross,” Greenberg noted.

Board member Steve Young said he was “personally uncomfortable with kids walking from Brookview Drive to South School.”

Young suggested the district might instead consider creating a walking path to South School using the existing right-of-way.

“It might make for a nice Eagle Scout project for someone,” he added.

With next year's bus routes to be released in late July, the board agreed to address the topic later this summer.

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April Guilmet may be reached at AGuilmet@newstote.com.