Bus doesn't stop for all: Richmond parents whose kids attend schools outside their zone face tough choice.

Byline: Olympia Meola

Sep. 17--An hour after Halimah Benson finished her overnight job, she's standing in the front yard of her Montrose Heights home.

Her four children and her brother's three kids are squirreling around and swinging backpacks, waiting for a ride to Richmond's Bellevue Elementary School.

Last year, Benson's children rode a school bus to Bellevue, which is one of eight city elementary schools that accepts students from outside its neighborhood attendance zone. Parents such as Benson use the open-enrollment option to move their children to schools they prefer.

But the School Board axed out-of-zone busing from this year's budget to save an estimated $625,600, a cost-cutting measure included in a city audit of the school operations. On paper, cutting bus drivers and streamlining routes looked good.

. . .

Now, two weeks into the school year, administrators say they are trying to make the new system work while hearing unsettling accounts of what parents are doing to get their children to school -- including one parent who put her South Richmond fifth-grader on a city bus to get to a school north of the James River.

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