COEUR d'ALENE - Kiri Trotter was caught off guard Tuesday when the school bus never showed up in the morning to transport her 11-year-old son to his first day of school.

Trotter's family is among 42 families affected by the Coeur d'Alene School District's decision to discontinue bus service along several miles of routes in three outlying areas of the school district.

Trotter, and other parents living in the Wolf Lodge area, are concerned about the safety of the decision, and they are now troubled because they were never notified by the district office of the change.

"People are pretty upset out here," Trotter said. "To have them drop the ball like this is disheartening."

Trotter's son, and other children along the Wolf Lodge route, were previously picked up at the end of their driveways along the roads they lived on.

School busses transporting students in Trotter's neighborhood are no longer traveling beyond the intersection of Alder Creek Road and Wolf Lodge Creek Road.

Similar changes have been made in the Cougar Gulch and North Hayden Lake areas.

Idaho law requires school districts to provide transportation for students living more than 1.5 miles from their school. It also allows districts to designate certain areas, where providing transportation is deemed impractical, as "non-transportation zones." In those areas, school districts can provide "in-lieu-of-transportation reimbursement" to parents, a mileage allowance for each mile beyond 1.5 miles from the nearest bus stop. That option is available to families affected by the recent bus route changes.

Michelle Parkin, the mother of a sixth-grade student and a second-grade student, said she found out about the bussing changes when she went and registered her kids at their school in mid-August.

"But that's only because I looked," she said.

Like Trotter, Parkin, who also lives in the Wolf Lodge area, said she worries about her kids walking along their rural road with no sidewalks, where there are many wild animals.

"They're the third generation of my family that has taken the bus from out here," Parkin said.

Steve Briggs, the school district's finance director, said school officials are sympathetic to the families affected by the changes, but they have to balance the needs of the entire school district against the needs of 42 families.

"It tears us up to have to make these decisions," Briggs said. "The simple fact is we have to balance the budget."

There are other areas in the school district deemed "non-transportation zones," where parents are dealing with the same situation, Briggs said. They include Sun Up Bay, Windy Bay, Potlatch Hill's Armstrong Addition, beyond Fernan Village on Fernan Lake Road, beyond the turn-around on Loff's Bay Road and beyond Tobler's Marina around the south side of Hayden Lake.

The new bus route changes equate to a $93,000 transportation cost savings for the district.

Coeur d'Alene school busses traveled 709,193 miles during the last school year.

The district's transportation funding is $1.6 million, although it expects to spend $2 million.

School officials began researching the feasibility of changing the bus routes last year, as a cost-saving measure following cuts in state funding for kindergarten- to- 12th-grade transportation.

Until two years ago, state funding for transportation supported 85 percent of the cost to school districts. In recent years, districts have been expected to cover a larger share of their transportation costs, Briggs said. Funding was cut by 10 percent last year, and another 10 percent this year.

The district held a meeting for parents in July 2010, that Briggs said was well-attended.

"We decided at that time, that there were some questions that needed to be answered, and we decided to defer the decision," Briggs said.

By last April, school officials had decided to move forward again with the proposed changes, and sent a letter by mail to parents notifying them of the changes and of the May 2 school board meeting where trustees would be apprised of the changes.

Another letter was sent inviting parents to a May 17 informal meeting about the bus routes. Representatives of nine families signed in at that meeting.

Both letters advised parents the board would be taking action on the transportation changes at the June 6 school board meeting.

There was no public opposition to the plan at the June 6 meeting, no public comment was received on the changes, and they were approved by trustees.

"What we didn't do, and should have done a better job of, is notifying those parents of the board's decision," Briggs said.

Superintendent Hazel Bauman said the decision to change the bus routes is not one school officials take lightly.

"The goal was that every family would know, ahead of time," Bauman said. "We didn't reach that goal. That's not acceptable."

Historically, Bauman said, it has always been the parent's responsibility to get their child to the bus stop or to school.

"The ideal thing would be for all children to be picked up at their front door, but that's not realistic," Bauman said.

Trotter, who lives 1.8 miles from her son's new bus stop, said the situation is "unacceptable."

"I'm going to have to put in for an emergency shift change at my job, and I never should have to do that. They knew about this in June," Trotter said.