A Scarborough daycare provider has objected to the Scarborough schools’ new bus policy, which limits the number of bus stops and initially would have required more than 20 children to wait for their buses just feet from Route 1, a move that has been put off until officials study the matter more closely.

The schools’ new policy is designed to shorten the length of time students spend on buses by reducing the number of stops and centralizing them in neighborhoods.

But Heidi McDonald, owner and operator of Heidi’s House in the Enterprise Business Park, said the new policy will create undue hardship among her clients and other parents in town and plans on fighting the changes this fall.

The new policy has high school and middle school students walking up to a half-mile from their homes to their bus stops, and a quarter-mile for children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

It also bars busing children from daycare centers to elementary schools other than the one serving the region of town where the daycare center is located.

Last week McDonald received a letter from Scott Macomber, district transportation director, telling her that the bus would no longer travel down the tenth of a mile on Enterprise Drive to pick up students from her business.

Instead, the students would have to walk up the road to meet the bus at the front of the park. In addition, the district notified her that it would no longer be providing transportation to or from Pleasant Hill School.

McDonald met with Superintendent Bill Michaud and Macomber on Wednesday morning and a temporary agreement was reached to form a committee to study bus stops.

Until the committee issues a report, buses will travel down Enterprise Drive and pick up the students at the road entrance of the Heidi’s House parking lot.

McDonald was content with this decision, as long as she does not have to take kids up and down Enterprise Drive, which she said is dangerous.

“You will not see me on that road,” McDonald said. “You save a couple of minutes, but we’re going to put all these kids at risk every day. Whose logic is that?”

The issue of transporting the children to elementary schools outside of a day care’s region of town is a bit trickier. For this year the schools have agreed to transport students to all three primary schools. According to Michaud, the decision was made because of the short notice parents received about the change.

But beginning in the fall of 2006 school buses will only provide transport from Heidi’s House to and from Eight Corners School.

That will affect McDonald’s business and many of the families who attend the facility, some of whom have been coming for years.

Heidi’s House is the only childcare facility in town that has a 6:30 a.m. drop-off, McDonald said. This gives parents who have to work early in the morning a chance to drop off their kids and get to work by 7 a.m. However, if the more restrictive policy is enacted next year some families will no longer be able to send their children to her.

But the larger issue is giving parents the right to choose their own childcare center wherever in town it is located, McDonald said. She is expecting to raise the issue with the school board this fall with hopes of getting the policy overturned.

McDonald said she does not want any special exceptions for her business and thinks the district should provide transportation from all of the town’s daycare centers to all of the schools.

“This is just eliminating choice for parents,” she said.

Michaud said Heidi’s House is the only daycare in town that buses children to more than one elementary school. How and why this occurred is not clear, he said. Still he wants to make sure that all of the town’s daycare centers are treated equally and live by the same rules.

Michaud defended Macomber’s decision, saying that he was simply enforcing a policy that was enacted by the school board in May.

The district has not received any other complaints regarding the reshuffling of bus stops. But the updated list has not been published, Michaud said.

It is expected to be published in the Current in the next few weeks, after which Michaud is expecting some concerns to be raised. Concerns regarding the safety of bus stops will be referred to the bus stop committee, he said.

A group of students from Heidi