A parent is campaigning to change a regulation on school transportation at the Sherbrooke Region School Service Center for divorced parents.
Hugo Raymond and the mother of his children are separated and school transportation is only offered at his ex-spouse’s home.
Therefore, this family is without school transportation service to their second permanent address for a period of five weeks. Last winter, Hugo Raymond reported this situation to the TVA Nouvelles team.
The Sherbrooke region school service center then explained that it would be necessary to wait until the start of the school year to find out if places were available and that, if so, a fee of $150 per child would be charged for the second address. .
Meanwhile, Hugo Raymond has to take his two children to his mother’s house so they can take the bus.
The two teenagers attend two different schools. The bus schedules are not the same. For three weeks it has been quite a family gymnastics.
“At night there is more time. One of the boys arrives at 16:45 and the other at 17:15. We will go there to receive Théodore and we will have to wait. (…) The family routine causes us to lose perhaps an hour a day,” explained the father, who wants to change this way of doing things.
Hugo Raymond called the national protector of students and launched a petition to make school transportation free and accessible to all children in Quebec, whether they have one or two addresses.
The CSSRS parent committee admits to having been contacted several times in recent years by families experiencing this same situation.
For its part, the school services center rejected our request for an interview, and is awaiting the conclusions of the student protector before making a statement.
Hugo Raymond should know at the end of the month if his children will have access to school transportation at home. He intends to continue his efforts even if the response is positive.
