Bethlehem mother advocates for safer bus stop

A few days before school started in late August, mother and Bethlehem resident Brooke Molina opened an envelope with her stepson’s bus pass, informing her of a change to his bus stop.

She immediately pulled up Google maps on her phone to see where the new stop was.

“And then I’m like, ‘Oh heck no,’” Molina said. “I’m not going to have my 10-year-old stepson walk all the way down there.” 

The new stop required her stepson, who normally walks home by himself from the bus, to cross two lanes of traffic on Route 412, a road she said is busy with semi-trucks and fast-moving vehicles.

Molina said the sidewalk her son had to walk on was overgrown with bushes on one side, pushing him closer to the road.

The stop was changed from Crest Avenue and Route 412 this year because of traffic violations at that stop, said Mark Stein, chief facilities and operations officer for the Bethlehem Area School District. 

Stein also said, to avoid stopping on Route 412 itself, the bus had to perform an illegal maneuver to turn around. 

According to Stoparm bus cameras, which the Bethlehem Area School District uses, Stein said 14% of all traffic violations reported to the district last year were at the Crest Avenue stop.

The Princeton Avenue bus stop was a quarter of a mile farther down the road than Crest Avenue. 

Molina said there wasn’t a crossing guard to monitor children crossing Route 412. 

“I’m 29 years old and I don’t want to walk (to the bus stop),” Molina said. “I had to walk back from walking him down into the bus stop and I was like, ‘why do I feel uncomfortable?’”

The walk made Molina so nervous that she would find a neighbor to leave her 2-year-old daughter with while she walked her stepson to the bus.

After opening the envelope informing her of the change, Molina said she first emailed the school to ask if the change was a mistake. 

After hearing back that it wasn’t, Molina said she left a voicemail with the superintendent’s office and didn’t hear back.

Fed up, Molina decided to write a petition, printed it out and started walking around her neighborhood. 

“I literally went door-to-door during naptime to get this petition signed and it was a lot of work, but we got it done,” Molina said. 

She got signatures from 52 neighbors, 22 of whom have children who take the bus, Molina said. 

One of the parents who signed her petition was Lynette Silva, whose fourth and second grader take the bus everyday. 

Silva said she needed no convincing to sign Molina’s form.

“(Route) 412 is a very busy road, I just didn’t feel good about it,” Silva said. “It’s a very busy stretch of highway. There’s a lot of tractor-trailer traffic because they have the fadeaway from 78 over to the industrial park.”

Stein said Route 412 connects Interstate 78 to Bethlehem, meaning people coming off the interstate, sometimes exceeding the speed limit.

Before taking her petition to the school board, Molina first tried going to the Bethlehem Area School District Education Center and the transportation committee. 

She said it felt like nobody wanted to help. 

“Something is getting missed between the BASD board, the staff, like something’s not clicking and then the parents are just totally not even connected,” Molina said.

Having no luck with these efforts, Molina asked Winston Alozie, a member of the school board whom she knew from the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem, what she should do. 

Molina said he told her to go to the school board and speak up. 

As someone with little experience in public speaking, she said she was extremely nervous. 

“I worked up the courage to write a speech, and I didn’t think I was actually going to go in front of the board,” Molina said. “This is not something I would ever do in my life.”

Overcoming her anxiety, Molina spoke at the school board meeting on Aug. 24, voicing her concerns shared by 52 of her neighbors. In response, a meeting was set up between Molina, the school district’s superintendent Renato M. Lajara and Stein. 

In the meeting, Molina said she and another parent proposed a new bus stop at the dead end of Crest Avenue and Featherway, where the bus could turn around in a cul-de-sac and students would wait on the grass without crossing any major roads. 

Stein said because of the students not walking on the sidewalk to the stop, it hadn’t been on their radar as an option, but the willingness of the parents to step in and take care of jobs like plowing made changing the stop easier.

Even a stop change like this that may seem minor, impacted the whole bus route. 

Stein said a change of three minutes for one stop led to differences in timing across the route for students, but the transportation team prioritized safety.

“We have so many kids to deliver within a certain time period, but we don’t ever pit time against safety,” Stein said. “So if it takes us an extra three minutes to do it safely, then we’re gonna do it.”

Sept. 14 was the first day Molina’s stepson and around seven other students got on at the new bus stop, which Molina and Silva both said is the safest option yet.

Getting the new stop approved made Molina feel invincible, she said. 

“It was great to show my kids that you can do things the right way by speaking up, and you don’t need to be nasty about it,” Molina said. “And if you just do it the right way, things can change.”

Silva had a similar reaction to the outcome of the petition.

“I just hope it shows when parents in the community speak up about safety, small practical solutions can make a real difference and I’m really happy with the results,” Silva said. 

Stein said he was pleased with the outcome and was happy that parents spoke up about their concerns. 

According to the Bethlehem Area School District website, the transportation department delivers around 10,000 students to 88 different locations in the Lehigh Valley. 

Along with the 22 schools in the Bethlehem Area School District, buses also transport students to charter and private schools within 10 miles of the district’s boundaries.

Stein said bus routes and stops are generally determined by maximizing the number of students picked up with the fewest number of stops possible.

The number of violations at the Crest Avenue stop led the transportation team to move the stop to Princeton Avenue, which Stein said met the standards for a bus stop.

“​​From a pure transportation standpoint, we feel like that (bus stop) was acceptable,” Stein said. “We definitely heard the concern, you know, kids have to walk along (the road) on a public sidewalk. It is (Route) 412, which is busier than most streets.”

He also said the system of planning and executing bus routes is more complicated than people may realize. 

The school transportation team in the Lehigh Valley drives around 6,000 miles a day, approximately the same distance to Bethlehem to Disneyland in California, Disneyworld in Florida and back again every day, Stein said.

“Most people have no idea what goes into making a machine like this work,” Stein said. “It’s pretty inspiring to see the people who do this every day, make it work.”

On the bus stop’s first day, Molina decorated a sign with balloons so children would know where to go. In preparation for the day, some parents in the neighborhood mowed the lawn of the property. 

Mowing and shoveling snow at the bus stop is currently the responsibility of parents or guardians in the community, Silva said. 

The goal of several parents in the neighborhood is to eventually put down rocks for a path. 

Stein said the property through which the students now walk to the bus stop belongs to UGI Utilities, Inc.

Although she is satisfied with the result of her speaking up, Molina said she felt frustrated with the communication between parents, staff and the school board, and this isn’t the first time she’s felt this way.

“Something needs to change because I really feel like we’re failing our students in a way,” Molina said. “This is our future. We have to all work together. We shouldn’t be working against each other. “

Going through multiple channels to get her voice heard was difficult, Molina said. 

But she appreciated Superintendent Lajara’s response after she spoke up at the meeting. 

“I really am appreciative that he was just like ‘we’re gonna set you up with a meeting right away,’” Molina said. “That’s what we need.”