The Stafford County School Board is redrawing its lines again due to overcrowding and a shortage of bus drivers.  The lines they are suggesting don’t make any sense.  Many children currently attend Park Ridge Elementary School, and now the school board wants to send them to Garrissonville.  These kids are within walking distance.  Crossing guards did a head count of 143 kids that walk to school.  It takes longer to drive them to the new school than it does to walk to the current school.  These children live in Park Ridge and have been going to this school for years.  Why are they moving them out?  The School Board is cutting the Park Ridge Community in half.  They are going to send them to a school that is miles away.  The proposals show some students will now have to go through two different school districts just to get to Park Ridge.  

These boundary changes will increase the amount of buses and drivers needed.  Stafford doesn’t have enough drivers now.  These new routes will also increase traffic congestion on the roads causing more delays.  We recommended that they send a representative to come to Park Ridge during arrival and dismissal and to see the amount of people who walk to the school.  They did not.  Many of the kids that currently walk will be too far away to legally walk home if they are redistricted.  

The overcrowding of Stafford County Schools will not be fixed by moving kids around from one district to the next year after year.  We suggested that they bring in modular buildings to deal with the overcrowding as a temporary fix, while they add to the current schools and build more.  The parents of Stafford need to let the School Board that know that communities need to stay together.  We cannot wait for years waiting for them build new schools.  We need them now.