Families to keep fighting to force Brookfield busing

By Ed Runyan

Two of the pupils involved are the children of Judges Ronald Rice and Cynthia Wescott Rice.

WARREN — It’s apparently a good thing several families in Brookfield who want their children bused to Catholic schools in Warren have lawyers in the family.

That’s because the legal matter ruled on Friday by visiting Judge Thomas P. Curran in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court is apparently a long way from over.

Judge Curran, sitting by assignment, ruled in favor of the Brookfield school board, meaning he will not order the district to provide busing to the pupils.

For now, parents will drive their children to school, which began Thursday at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren and Blessed Sacrament (K-6) school in Howland.

The parents sued in May, asking the court to force the school system to bus their children. The school system offered to reimburse the families for the transportation, but the families insist on transportation, not reimbursement.

Judge Curran said he could find nothing in the law, nor in the history of the 2003 amendment to the state’s busing law, to justify ordering the Brookfield system to bus about a dozen pupils to the two schools.

Ronald Rice, judge of Eastern District Court in Brookfield, represented the parents and pupils seeking the busing — including two of his own children.

His wife is Cynthia Wescott Rice, judge of the 11th District Court of Appeals in Warren, where Judge Ronald Rice has said the case is headed next.

Judge Ronald Rice said he will appeal Judge Curran’s decision, which means the case will likely go to a district court other than the 11th District so that it doesn’t go before the court where his wife serves.

“It’s just a legal argument,” Judge Ronald Rice said of the subject matter of Judge Curran’s decision.

He insists the principles involved — whether the school district has the right to refuse busing on the basis that it is impractical — were previously decided in the parents’ favor by the Ohio Board of Education. That body concluded the 15-minute ride from Brookfield to the Catholic schools was not impractical, Judge Ronald Rice said.

The parents filed a mandamus action to force the district to abide by the Ohio school board’s wishes, but the Ohio law that governs the matter is “poorly written,” Judge Ronald Rice said after Judge Curran explained his ruling Friday in open court. Until the matter is decided by an appeals court or the Ohio Supreme Court, it’s difficult to know how it should be interpreted, Judge Ronald Rice said.

Atty. David Millstone, representing the school board, said the 2003 revision of the state busing law says if a local school board refuses to provide the busing the state thinks it should, the state school board can take funds from the school district and pay them to the pupil’s school or family.

Since that is the remedy written into the law, “that’s what you’re stuck with,” Millstone said, not the remedy the parents involved in the lawsuit want.

Judge Ronald Rice said he has handled the matter so far at his own cost.

runyan@vindy.com