BEVERLY — Julia Andrews was upset when McKeown School closed, and her kids were redistricted to North Beverly Elementary.
But she was twice as upset when she found out she would have to pay $600 to send them there on the bus.
Their new school is a lot farther away than their old one, she was told, but not far enough to qualify them for free busing.
"They closed the school we would walk to, and then we would have to pay $600," she said. "I do appreciate there has to be a cutoff somewhere, and I'm sure there are people who missed the mark. It's unfortunate it's McKeown families that seem to be taking the brunt of this decision."
Across the city, families on one side of the street may have kids taking the bus to school for free, while their neighbors on the other side have to pay $300 to $600 for the service.
It comes down to how far you live from the school. If it's over a mile and a half, the bus is free. If it's under a mile and a half, you have to pay.
And that's left many families debating the distance between their front door and the school they were moved to.
Andrews, who lives behind Henry's Market on Ellsworth Avenue, was one of those parents.
"There's a lot of confusion over how they calculated the distance," she said.
She was initially told her house was just under the line at 1.47 miles away, and she would have had to pay $600. The rate is $300 for one child or $600 for two or more.
"But then I proved I was actually over 1.5 miles," Andrews said. After using MapQuest to calculate the distance and coming up with different results, she went to Google Maps and in the drop-down menu underneath the directions, she changed "By Car" to "Walking."
The result was more like 1.59 miles away. She appealed the decision to Transportation Director Bill Burke and won.
"I do wonder if there are other people out there ... that don't know about the fact they can get buses," she said.
Burke has gotten about 50 phone calls from parents, and in most cases the distance he determined for them is accurate.
"A lot of people are using MapQuest," he said.
However, he said he understands the frustration.
"It's certainly difficult to know your kindergartner used to walk across the street to McKeown, and now they're being bused off to Ayers."
The district shut down McKeown Elementary School and turned the building into an alternative secondary school to help close a $2.6 million gap between spending and revenue in the budget.
Most of the 200 kids walked to McKeown, and many of them will now be bused because they were split between North Beverly and Ayers as part of the redistricting.
Some elementary students in other schools were moved, as well, and Burke is buying two more buses, for about $160,000, to accommodate the additional 150 kids who will use the service. The cost was calculated into the district's plan.
He also spent about $400,000 to replace six buses from 1999 with new ones from 2009, using money budgeted for the purpose.
School Committee President Annemarie Cesa said she's gotten complaints from parents, as well, but the annual cost of adding another bus for people is about the same as a teacher's salary.
"If we added buses for all those children, it would be hundreds of thousands of dollars," she said. "I can't justify the cost of teachers for a bus."
Burke said the Transportation Department indeed uses Google Maps to calculate the shortest distance from houses to schools, and it's important to make a distinction between walking and driving. You can often walk down a one-way street that you can't drive down, which makes the distance shorter, he said.
"I don't like telling people they're just under," he said. "But we have to go by some type of criteria. It could be 50 yards, but there has to be some line somewhere."
The line is actually closer than it has to be. The state mandates people pay for buses over two miles, but the city changed it to 1.5 miles.
When it comes to parents debating the distance between their house and the school they're attending, Burke said he understands the concerns and tries to talk to everyone on an individual basis.
"They want to make sure what they have is fair," he said. "I guess that's what everyone wants in this world."
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