Student bus seats rethink

Narrogin Senior High School students living in Pingelly left without a seat on the Public Transport Authority’s school Bus Services have now been given complimentary seats.

The students will have to travel to and from Popanyinning each day to access the SBS to NSHS.

Complimentary passenger status on the SBS means that approval of travel can be withdrawn if an eligible student requires a seat and the bus service reaches capacity.

Brookton District High School is the designated secondary school for students in Years 7 to 10 living in Pingelly according to PTA spokesman David Hynes.

“If there are spare seats, we can allow non-entitled students, for example, a student who is not attending their closest appropriate school access to orange school buses on the strict provision that they can no longer travel if an eligible student needs the seat,” he said.

“This is known as complimentary status, the potential for these students to have to give up their seat for an eligible child is made very clear to parents at the time they are offered complimentary status.”

Some parents of students that graduated from Pingelly Primary School last year placed their children on the SBS’ Pingelly to Narrogin at the end of 2018.

Many said NSHS offered better education pathways than BDHS, while a couple of parents of children with autism said that BDHS did not offer appropriate support for their kids.