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Parents of two students attending the school next fall told Peekskill administrators at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting that they just learned that the district cannot provide busing to the parochial school.
The district had been required to provide busing to students from Peekskill because there was an anchor student in the city who lived within the district-approved 4-mile radius, according to school board president Joseph Urbanowicz.
"There was a student in the 4-mile radius of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton who we had to transport under the requirements for the current transportation mandate," Urbanowicz said. "Because of that student we had to send a bus out so for other students who were going there, it didn't cost us anything else to transport them."
But that student is no longer attending the Catholic elementary school in Shrub Oak. So far, no child living within four miles of the school has been identified.
Nancy Flaherty told the board she and other parents had little time to make alternative plans because they were just notified about the busing change last week. She urged the board to write up a busing change proposal to be put up for a vote in the May 21 school budget election.
Thirty-six students from Peekskill have already been confirmed to be attending St. Elizabeth Ann Seton next fall after the closing of Peekskill's Assumption School, Flaherty said.
"The problem is this came to light after the April 1 deadline had passed to submit four our private parochial transportation," said business superintendent Greg Sullivan.
The Board of Education would have to vote to allow such a measure and the petition would require a 30-day waiting period before the budget vote, which was not possible at this late a date, according to Urbanowicz
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