School Busing Law Troubles Two Westwood Families

A state law on school busing has frustrated two Westwood fathers who said they don't want to send their children walking down Old Hook Road to get to the .

Joe Malley of Old Hook Road and Lou Qualliu of Bergenline Avenue said school officials told them their sons would have to walk to school because their homes fell just short of the state-mandated two-mile minimum for busing. State law requires the shortest path to be used in the measurement. Qualliu said an addition to the school may have put a rear entrance at just under two miles away. His older daughter was allowed to take the bus, he said.

Both men said they did not want to send their children down busy Old Hook Road and that they offered to pay for busing to the school. The bus route goes past their homes to pick up other children nearby, according to Malley.

"I'm not going to send my kid across a highway when a bus passes my house," Malley said.

Superintendent Geoffrey Zoeller said the district could not allow them to pay for busing because they do not have a subscription busing policy and, under the state law, the district would have to open the remaining seats on buses to all the families who live within the two-mile minimum on a lottery basis.

"Your odds would be vanishingly small," Zoeller said. "You'd be in a lottery with hundreds of kids."

Westwood Mayor John Birkner and State Assemblyman Robert Schroeder both wrote letters to the district which stated they believed the distance was actually more than two miles.

Zoeller said he believed that the officials used a route which was not the shortest possible, but he did order that the district would remeasure the route before the start of the new school year next week. If the measure finds they are two miles away, the students will take the bus, Zoeller said.

If the remeasure finds they are less than two miles away, the men will have drive their children or go to the Westwood government to request sidewalks and crossing guards for Old Hook Road.

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