By Susie Trenkle

After several weeks of angry words and hard feelings, it was announced at last week's board of education meeting that the Levittown School District would not be going forth with a project to construct a bus driveway around the Gardiner's Avenue Elementary School, which would have, in some instances, come within inches of neighboring properties.

The decision, according to School Board President Michael Moriarity, comes with an apology to the neighbors for the lack of communication about the project. It was this failure to notify them that had many of the residents of Gardiner's Ave. and Club and Book Lanes, whose homes abut the school, angry and upset. These residents, within the last several weeks, have made it clear that community input was a must for a project that would impact the neighbors to this extent.

Moriarity, in announcing the decision not to construct the driveway, called what happened "a miscommunication" and assured residents that they would be involved in any future plans. "What we plan on doing in the future is, if we are going to do something, we'd like to get up a committee with the principal of the school, Mr. Furlong, with representatives from the PTA, and with representatives from the residents that are directly involved," said the board of education president. "That's the only fair way to go about it."

The proposal for the bus driveway came about in response to concerns about the safety of the children at Gardiner's Avenue Elementary School, who are currently dropped off and picked up in the two bus circles located in front of the school. There were concerns that these children and the children who walk to school were in danger because of the current set-up. Part of the problem, which the school district was hoping to address with the new bus driveway, was the fact that people who are dropping off and picking up their children double park, thus creating a vision impediment for any children trying to cross. With the new bus driveway, the current bus circles could have been used for parents' cars.

According to Moriarity, he has requested a meeting between himself, Levittown Superintendent of Schools Dr. Herman Sirois, New York State Assemblywoman Kate Murray, Nassau County Legislator Dennis Dunne, and the commander of the Nassau County Police Department's 8th Precinct, in an attempt to have the police keep a closer watch on the parking and traffic problems in that area. Both Dunne and Murray were at a recent meeting about the bus driveway, and encouraged the school district to come up with another solution which would not impact the neighbors so severely.

Jeanne Gebert, one of the residents of Book Lane, who would have been impacted had the bus driveway proposal gone through, spoke at last week's board of education meeting on behalf of the neighbors of Gardiner's Ave. School. She noted that the neighbors appreciated the fact that it was on the record that input from the community would be sought in the future and proceeded to deliver a petition, signed by the neighbors, calling for the district to halt the planned construction of the bus driveway. The petition stated, "The residents in this neighborhood were never notified of the construction of this bus driveway, never given a forum to discuss the impact of this driveway on their children's safety, their environment, their health and lives, in general. We feel that only after the above has taken place, then and only then, should consideration be given to an intelligent plan to meet the needs of the school's bus transportation and our children's safety." Gebert explained that going into the meeting the neighbors had no idea what the district's decision would be, so in the days prior to the meeting she went around collecting signatures from the neighboring community. "There was not one home that I went to that did not agree with my position that the school handled this very poorly," said Gebert.