ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) -
Parents in some inner-city Atlanta neighborhoods are demanding that school district leaders reinstate bus service to families who live within walking distance of their children's schools.
"It's dangerous for these kids," said Latasha Tigner, parent of a Gideons Elementary School kindergartner. Tigner said she had to quit one of her housekeeping jobs so that she can walk her son to school.
Atlanta Public Schools has long had a rule that it will not provide bus service to elementary school students who live within a mile of their school and older students who live within 1.5 miles of their school. But for years, the district ignored that rule, allowing bus service for those families anyway.
School system leaders say with the district's tight budget, it no longer can afford to grant exceptions to the rule.
Monday afternoon, several parents staged a protest outside the school board meeting. They held signs, one which read, 'Where's the bus, Mommy?'
The parents said they learned about the changes the day before they went into effect.
"They didn't give us enough time to prepare," said parent Chandra Gallashaw, whose children don't have bus service this year. She said her children must walk to school through a dangerous neighborhood.
"I have a daughter that was raped in 2007 walking home from Carver High School, and I thought then that she should have had a bus bringing her home. And she was 17," Gallashaw said.
"A lot of communities have no sidewalks, stray dogs, mainly pit bulls," said protest organizer Nathaniel Dyer.
He said with the recent closing of schools and rezoning of districts, Atlanta kids have been through enough changes.
"Now we're going to put an extra caveat in there to basically punish these children," Dyer said.
Several of the parents addressed the school board Monday afternoon, including State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta.
"At the risk of being rude, I don't want to hear whose responsibility it is. I don't want to hear that because each day you delay giving those children in Pittsburgh and those surrounding neighborhoods a bus to ride on is a day they are at risk," he said as audience members applauded.
School board members agreed to look into the issue and discuss it at the next meeting. But Gallashaw wants them to take it a step further.
"I would like to challenge them to walk the streets of Metropolitan and McDaniel," she said.
Copyright 2012 WGCL-TV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.
