Walking to school not always safe

In answer to a letter in your newspaper on his views of school closings during snow and icy days, the writer evidently isn’t aware that all school children cannot walk the distance to school, therefore the necessity for buses.
It would cost the state school system thousands upon thousands to build schools within walking distance of every student.
Many of the roads on the bus routes are curvy and narrow and dangerous, even in good weather. When it’s snowy and icy, these roads cannot be used to safely transport our children to school, causing the need to call school off on those days.
The decision to close is not taken lightly by school officials. They are out on those roads early, before bus run time, to see if they are unsafe for buses to transport the children to school. We had four who traveled on the same bus all during their elementary and secondary education.
One or all four of our children could have been seriously hurt or killed if the driver had slid and the bus had gone over an embankment while traveling on unsafe roads. Having lost one of our children to death after she became an adult, I can only say that the pain of losing a child never really goes away for the parents as well as their siblings. It’s like a sore that has scabbed over.
Thank you school officials for looking after the safety of our precious children.
Flonnie Hawkins
Stanford