Board won’t study safety of bus stop

At one of its final meetings of 2023, the Sussex-Wantage Regional Board of Education voted down a resolution calling for $2,385 to be paid to MBO Engineering to study the safety of a controversial school bus stop at Mount Salem and Greenville roads in Wantage.

The vote came a year or so after pleas for a new bus stop began from the family who uses the bus stop as well as others in the community.

The issue gained more attention in August after the school district decided not to change the location of the bus stop, and Lea Gunther, now a seventh-grader, put together a petition asking that her bus stop be changed.

The petition requests that the stop, which is about 1.8 miles from the front door of her house (1.3 miles from the end of her driveway), be changed to a closer and safer location.

Joining her daily at the stop are her younger brother, who is in fifth grade, and her sister, who is in third grade.

“I put together the petition because I thought it was a good way to prove to the Board of Education that the taxpayers were on my side,” Lea said. “Two thousand people have signed it, but the Board of Education does not seem to care about student safety. I have learned that adults say a lot of things that they do not really mean, and the most frustrating part of this is that there are bus stops closer to my house that are no longer used because the kids who used them are older now.”

On days when their mother, Rebecca Gunther, cannot drive them to the bus stop, the children walk on Greenville Road, which has no shoulder and cars regularly traveling over 40 and 50 mph, according to Rebecca.

In New Jersey, local school districts create bus stops and routes, giving the Board of Education ultimate control. The board says its responsibility begins and ends at the bus stop, not the journey to and from the stop, other than to make sure the bus stop is not more than 2 miles from the front door of the child’s home.

However, according to the Gunthers and others, once students arrive at the bus stop at the intersection of Mount Salem and Greenville roads, the lack of sightlines for oncoming drivers making corner turns puts them at risk. Whether the Gunthers are waiting for the bus in their mother’s vehicle or standing outside it, there is very little room between the edge of the road and an electric fence.

“Even when we wait in the car, we could easily get rear-ended,” said Rebecca. “The problem is there used to be a lot of families with kids on Greenville Road before we moved here two years ago. Those kids had bus stops near their homes on Greenville Road; in fact, I think there were three stops between our driveway and our present stop.

“Our neighbors have said their kids, when they were of school age, were picked up within a short distance of their driveways on Greenville Road in a safe location. Why the board refuses to let us use one of those old stops is something we cannot understand.”

Advocate for family

Barbara Holstein, president of the school board in the neighboring Montague School District and assistant supervisor of transportation in Mount Olive, has spent the better part of the past year advocating for the Gunthers.

“I will continue to advocate for them to the highest levels of New Jersey Department of Education to compel the Sussex-Wantage Regional School District to reinstate the previously existing district bus stops at or near its original location to provide the safest transportation to and from school along their rural bus route,” she said.

“In all my years of driving, I have never witnessed this kind of refusal to provide a safe bus stop for children from any of the districts I have driven as either a district driver or independent contracted driver. The County Road 519 (Greenville Road) and Mount Salem bus stop is not safe,” she added.

“The two factors most concerning, in my professional experience, are visibility and safe waiting location. The insufficient visibility for approaching vehicles to react to the stopped bus and the children crossing to the bus from Mount Salem Road is a result of the curve and inclined road conditions on the approach to the bus stop. The speed limit is posted at 40 mph for this section of Mount Salem, which greatly affects the safety of the current bus stop. The rural nature of the location doesn’t provide recommended clearance of the bus danger zone for the children to wait for their bus. Even in their family car, they are in danger of becoming involved in a collision with an approaching vehicle due to the limited site distance. There is no place for the children to safely stand away from lanes of vehicle travel and wait for the bus.”

School board statement

When asked about the situation, Superintendent Michael Gall, via email, said the district would not comment on the advice of legal counsel.

He did include a Board of Education statement on the matter from Aug. 31 meeting, portions of which said:

“At the request of the family, to particularly address the bus stop change that has been raised by the public at several meetings, the Sussex County executive business administrator, on behalf of the Department of Education and the individual who oversees school transportation concerns within the county, has toured the bus stop at issue. He also reviewed the alternative bus stops that the Board of Education presented to the family and toured the bus stop that would require a school bus to enter New York State in order to turn around.

“According to the county business administrator, the current bus stop and the alternative bus stops presented by the Board of Education are safe and appropriate. The family’s desired bus stop, which is the end of their driveway, is not safe, as it would require the school bus to traverse on a dirt road. The county business administrator notified our school district that he had communicated this to the family as well.

“There is a misconception being perpetuated that the district will not offer a bus stop change. That is not accurate. Our district already offered three alternate bus stops, and the family declined - citing a need for door-side pickup and drop-off.”

The Sussex County School District business official who toured the bus stops is Neil Cramer.

“I toured the current bus stop and the alternative bus stops offered by the district and deemed them safe,” he said. “I do know that the Board of Education is concerned with the amount of time students spend on the bus, and if the bus had to cross into New York to turnaround, it could increase the time some students are on the bus by at least eight minutes, if I recall correctly.”

Turnaround route

One major sticking point for the Gunthers is the school board’s statement that the bus stop cannot be at the bottom of their driveway because the bus would have to turn around on a dirt road just over the New York border to continue its route.

Cramer said the school board also advised him that in addition to one or more of those “turnaround” roads being dirt, the area often is not plowed well.

Greenville Road turns into Mountain Road once the New York state line is crossed, and the turnaround in question is where Mountain Road (known as Greenville Road in New Jersey) meets Greenville Turnpike.

The bus would turn left onto Greenville Turnpike, pass the Greenville United Methodist Church on the right and take a left onto Minisink Turnpike before taking a right back onto Mountain Road, which turns into Greenville Road once the bus crosses back into New Jersey.

“I can confirm that Minisink, Mountain Road and Greenville Turnpike are paved roads,” said Greenville Highway Department Superintendent James Ferguson. “When it comes to snow removal, those are the first roads we plow.”

Fred Dunn, whose family owned a bus company for 42 years, lived on Greenville Road and is familiar with the location.

“I have no idea what is going on with the school district when it comes to this issue,” he said. “Greenville Road is not safe for anyone to walk on, and our bus company made that Greenville Road run for years when we did Sussex-Wantage, in fact going right by the Gunthers’ current address. We could have picked them up and dropped them off much closer to their home. The district has changed the route and is refusing to budge, apparently.”