A few days before the start of the school year, parents in Vallée-Jonction, in Beauce, fear for the safety of their children.
This is because due to health measures, schoolchildren will be deprived of school transport this year, and they will have to walk in an area where traffic is very heavy. Along the main street, where the primary school is located, there is no space between the path and the sidewalk.
“There is a lot of traffic, it’s really dangerous for children to walk to school,” says Marie-Christine Lavoie, mother of a girl who attends Vallée-Jonction primary school.
Usually, the Beauce-Etchemin School Services Center did not apply its policy on walking distances which stipulates that all students who live less than 1.6 km from the elementary school must walk there. .
“The number of places in vehicles has gone from 72 to 48 for primary school students. At the School Services Center, we operate 240 buses every day, so we lost 5,000 places, ”explains Jérôme L’Heureux, director of the Information and Organizational Resources Service at the Beauce-Etchemin School Service Center.
Informed of the situation, less than a week ago, the parents demand that the decision be reviewed before a tragedy occurs.
“Maybe, for a small village where there isn’t much traffic, the 1.6 km could be applied. But, here at Vallée-Jonction, it doesn’t make sense to apply the 1.6 km under conditions like here. If this is a rule that dates back 20 years, this rule should perhaps be changed with today’s reality, there is much more traffic now, ”said Marie-Christine Lavoie in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.
Parents who feel that their child is not safe can contact the School Service Center.
If the walking route is deemed unsafe, school transportation will be restored.
As there are many requests, the changes could take a few weeks.
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