Round Lake board approves hazard finding, addresses transportation service, software conversion errors

The Round Lake Area Board of Education on Oct. 6 approved a serious safety-hazard finding form to restore transportation eligibility for part of the John T. McGee attendance area and heard public and board discussion about recurring transportation service problems and a software conversion that removed some walker-boundary designations.

The action followed public comment from Tricia Snyder, a district parent, who said “The transportation department is notoriously hard to reach” and described an unresolved September 16 bus incident involving her 7-year-old. Deputy Superintendent Heather Bennett told the board families should escalate to her if they are not getting timely responses and said the district will present additional information at the next board meeting.

Why it matters: the board voted to submit the hazard form to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), which the district expects to rule on within about 30 days. If approved, the filing will formalize transportation eligibility for the specified McGee boundary; staff said the approval process is a points-based evaluation by IDOT and expressed strong confidence the application meets the criteria.

Board members pressed staff for concrete communication steps after the meeting’s discussion. Bennett said the district will notify affected families by email, text message and regular mail and will use the school building administrators as a second notification layer. She also said staff will confirm how ParentSquare messages can be routed to only the impacted families.

District staff described the underlying cause of the recent eligibility errors as a largely manual transfer of mapped walker boundaries when the district moved to a new routing system (Traversa/Tyler). Bennett said the conversion required redrawing maps and that some areas were omitted or misclassified in the new system. She said the district will develop standard operating procedures, add coding flags in the transportation system to mark hazardous areas, and conduct a comprehensive assessment of all boundaries going forward.

The board approved the motion to submit the hazard form for John T. McGee (motion by Mrs. Klingler, second by Miss Lee). The roll call vote was unanimous: Mrs. Larson, Mrs. Negrete McGinley, Mr. De Vera, Mrs. Klingler, Miss Lee and Mr. Francisco voted yes.

Staff said the submitted form cites two hazard types on the same application: Type 1 (walking along a roadway) and Type 3 (an intersection — Washington Street and Cedar Lake Road). Bennett said the form was prepared with point assessments for a middle-school–aged student; as written, the assessed points would not qualify a high-school student at Round Lake High unless the route exceeded the district’s 1.5-mile threshold for high school transportation.

Bennett told the board she would submit the board-approved form to IDOT and expected a determination in roughly 30 days. She said the district will wait for IDOT’s final approval before notifying families that their status has changed permanently.

Background and next steps: the district said a previous interim correction restored transportation this school year for the affected McGee families, and the current submission aims to make that correction permanent. Staff also said they will perform a districtwide review this year to identify any other areas that should have hazardous classifications and to ensure proper coding during future software conversions.

The board’s vote to submit the form was the formal action resulting from the discussion; staff committed to return with follow-up materials at the next board meeting and to send verified notices to families once IDOT’s determination is received.