Ideas offered by

citizen's panel on buses turned over to BOE

LYNCH

[email protected]

For a brief

few minutes Monday, the 10 citizen members of the Fayette County School

Board's Transportation Task Force thought they were off the hook.

Having met

for a second marathon session to iron out issues and offer solutions to

restore bus routes scaled back due to budget concerns, chairman Fred Phillips

declared it "officially disbanded" after presenting his final

report to the board.

But Board Member

Janet Smola stopped Phillips before he could sit down and questioned exactly

what it was the panel was recommending.

Scouring the

records of phone calls, e-mails and complaints filed by parents in the

first few days of school in August, the task force was able to identify

the significant issues and came up with a series of "ideas"

for resolving those issues in their final report.

Smola didn't

think it was what the board ordered.

"Now we

have a bunch of recommendations without knowing which suggestions are

the favored ones, or most important to the committee members," she

said.

"We weren't

asked to do that," said Phillips, head of purchasing for the school

system.

Superintendent

John DeCotis interjected, "I think that at this point in time, if

the board would allow us to consider these recommendations we will come