The board of trustees discussed the 2024-25 hazardous areas resolution—which outlines hazardous areas for over 3,000 students across 25 campuses—during the May 13 board meeting and approved it in a 6-1 vote during the May 20 meeting.
Explained
Per the Texas Education Agency, Behr said students are eligible to ride a bus if they live 2 or more miles away from their zoned school of attendance, or live less than 2 miles away but have hazardous traffic conditions.
These conditions include:
- Students must walk along or across a freeway, expressway or an overpass/underpass.
- No walkway is provided, or students must cross an uncontrolled major traffic artery.
For each campus listed, the hazardous areas and number of students affected are included.
What’s changing?
Behr said as the district continues to grow, the routes will change.
“Sometimes new home construction requires the addition of new bus routes; other times, improvements to the district’s pedestrian infrastructure eliminates what the state considers to be hazardous conditions, allowing more children to walk to school,” Behr said.
With the board’s approval of the resolution for the 2024-25 school year, a few areas are no longer considered hazardous due to various pedestrian walkway upgrades, including:
- Lennar at Plum Creek subdivision for Hays High School, Live Oak Academy and Barton Middle School students
- Hillside Drive between Dacy Lane/Hillside Terrace/I-35 for McCormick Middle School students
- Dacy Lane/Sunflower Road and the Dacy Lane apartment complex for Science Hall Elementary School students
Why it matters
Behr said the district receives a transportation allotment to operate bus services. The regular portion of this is for students who live more than 2 miles away from the school, receiving $1 per mile driven. However, the state also provides funding of up to 10% of a district’s regular transportation allotment for children who live within 2 miles of their school but would be subject to hazardous traffic conditions if they walked.
If a bus route loses the conditions that allowed it to qualify as hazardous, Behr said that route is no longer eligible to receive hazardous route funding.
During the 2023-24 school year, the transportation department reported about 363,000 hazardous miles driven and received $151,000 in hazardous route funding. Anything over that, the district does not receive any funding back for, Behr said.
Another point of view
Trustee Courtney Runkle was the opposing vote, saying the county has not made clear its efforts to improve pedestrian walkways on Campo Del Sol Parkway—a roadway around Sunfield Elementary she and others in the community have voiced concerns with being hazardous—despite the district starting conversations about the road with county leaders in October.
Behr said there are 199 students living on the north side of Campo Del Sol who do or could walk to Sunfield.
“I agree with all of the hazardous road conditions that have been presented. Unfortunately, Campo Del Sol is not listed on here,” Runkle said. “... I do hear and I do see the responses of the county as ‘working on the improvements of Campo Del Sol.’ Unfortunately, I have not seen exactly what those are. I can’t tell you where they want to put a crosswalk, where they want to put the lights, where they’re doing the painting. That’s not a visual that I have seen, and that has not been provided. ... We have a lot of kids that travel that road, and we need to make that road safer. So if this is not going to be included [as] a hazardous road, I’m going to be coming down hard on the county.”
