WEST MILFORD There are three families living on Melinda Lane who have chosen to provide their children with a Catholic education at Our Lady Queen of Peace. Right now, there is one child from each family, but next year several have siblings who will join the group. Hopefully by then, their parents will have resolved an issue they have been fighting about for three years. It started when the first Queen of Peace student entered kindergarten. State law says that the public school transportation department must provide private school students with either a ride or pay the family the amount budgeted for their child’s transportation. In this case, $859 per student. The first Melinda Lane OLQP student’s father, Eric Shouten, assumed the school bus would pick her up at the corner of Melinda Lane and Longhouse Road where the public school kids on the block catch their bus. But when they got their notification the bus stop was nearly a mile away on Lakeshore Drive. This requires a long walk down a narrow, windy and dangerous road. Shouten has been trying to get the district to change the stop ever since. In the meantime, two more children (from the Waitz and the Salleroli families) are now in the same situation. This week Eric Shouten, Nick Salleroli and Jeffrey Waitz went before the board of education with their complaint. They had previously brought the problem before Transportation Director Chuck Watenberger, Business Administrator Steven Cea and even the township police department. In anticipation of the parents’ complaint, several board members drove the route and reported that it was indeed dangerous and unacceptable, but Cea said there was nothing they could do because driving the extra eight-tenths of a mile would cause the district to go over the $859 budget. The three men pointed out that they only wanted the same treatment afforded the public school children and that between them they pay $46,000 in annual real estate taxes the lion’s share of which goes to the district and they don’t cost the district to educate their three children. But the district said one has nothing to do with the other and that their hands are tied. They said that public school students are budgeted differently than those from private school and that is why the public school kids are picked up at the end of their block, while the Catholic kids are not. The three men have hired an attorney to help them. The attorney has written a letter to board members and administrators. Shouten told the board it would be cheaper to change the bus route than to pay damages if something happened. The board is trying to find a solution.