For families, ride to school is long, costly

But transportation to and from the school has proven to be a difficult and expensive test for the Suddalas and other families who live east of Route 128.

Soon after Shrevya made a commitment to attend the academy a year ago, her father says, the school informed them there would be no bus stop in Waltham. And this fall, the bus stop was moved even farther from their home.

They now have to leave the house at 6:15 a.m. to get Shrevya, a seventh-grader, to the bus stop in Weston by the 6:45 a.m. pickup time. Suddala says he must leave his job in Watertown by 3:15 p.m. to meet Shrevya when the bus arrives at the same stop just after 4:30 p.m.

“It’s a lot of running around for me,’’ he said. The commute has become such a burden the family is debating whether Shrevya should continue attending the academy. “Next year, I might rethink on it,’’ he said.

Some parents say they’re happy their children were chosen by lottery to attend a school where math, science, and technology are the focus, but they weren’t prepared for the challenges and sacrifices they’ve had to make simply to make sure they get them to class on time each day. Children who ride the bus route from Weston are charged $2,016 for the school year.

“We continue to work on this issue and many bus stop issues affecting close to 59 different communities and 400 students who ride the buses,’’ said Barbara McGann, the school’s executive director, in an e-mail to the Globe. “If we are able to find a solution that is acceptable to both local law enforcement and other families impacted by changes in bus routes, we are more than willing to pursue it.’’

Students at the Advanced Math and Science Academy, which opened in 2005, are performing well on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. Among the students who took the 10th-grade MCAS exams this spring, 97 percent received “advanced’’ or “proficient’’ scores on the math and English tests, and 89 percent on the science test.

Rony Fong Flores, whose son Kenneth Fong is a seventh-grader at the school, said he and a small group of parents have been trying without success since June to get school officials to change the location of the Weston bus stop to a spot closer to Route 128.

Flores says most of the students who use this particular bus live in Newton, Waltham and Watertown, so driving to the stop at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church on Brown Street in Weston is a huge headache for everyone, particularly in the morning.

In a June 22 e-mail provided to the Globe by parents, the school’s director of operations and student life, Ann Richards, told them that the bus routes are designed to cover a large geographical area in order to serve the most students, but they are limited to a 75-minute run each way, and adding another stop was not feasible.

Until last month, the bus had been stopping on Trailside Road in Weston, which shortened the commute from Waltham by at least 10 minutes each way, Flores said. But the school moved the stop to Brown Street at the request of Weston police because of noise complaints from neighbors, Richards explained in a Sept. 30 e-mail to parents.

Weston Police Lieutenant Danny Maguire said his department asked the school to move the stop from Trailside Road last month after neighbors complained that the bus was stopping on Route 30, a hectic commuter road, and then backing down the dead-end street to turn around. It was an especially dangerous maneuver with children on board and other children living on both sides of the street, he said.

“This was an extremely unsafe situation,’’ said Maguire, who noted that traffic on Route 30 is heavy during rush hours with drivers often going up to 45 miles per hour.

Flores says he was also told the loud, beeping noise from the bus while in reverse caused dogs on the street to bark incessantly around 6:30 a.m., further irritating residents on Trailside.

The new stop on Brown Street is a safer location, said Maguire.

Dr. Milena Pavlova, whose son is in sixth grade, said after considering how far her house in Watertown is from the school campus, the family opted to use a private service instead of the bus. The service picks up several students in Newton and Waltham before getting her son at 7:10 a.m. and then heading to Marlborough.

Pavlova said she didn’t want her son to have to lose sleep in the mornings just to catch a bus at a remote bus stop and then spend two hours or more sitting on the bus each day.

However, the limousine service costs $3,100 per year per student, which Flores says is too expensive for his family and others.

Flores says that with no other charter schools outside of Boston offering the high level of math and science training the academy provides, parents feel they have few options but to accept the situation or try to work around it.

“It’s a hard decision,’’ he said. “It gives the kids the skills in math and science. For him, I sacrifice that. It’s hard to make that choice.’’

Christina Pazzanese can be reached at cpazzanese@ globe.com.