The appellant seeks reversal of a decision made by the Lake Mills Community School District board to deny her request for an agreement with Forest City Community District for the transportation of open-enrolled children across district lines.

The appellant takes her children to their grandparents home in Forest City to catch the school bus, and then picks them up at the end of the day. The grandparents are retiring and plan to spend a substantial portion of the winter away from their home. She asks that the Forest City bus be allowed within 1/4 of a mile within the Lake Mills boundary to pick up the children at their home for safety reasons.

When Lake Mills denied the request, the appellant complained there was no discussion and no rationale given for the decision. The superintendent's recollection was the board's concern about entering into a reciprocal transportation agreement with other districts, and "Where would we draw the line?" One of the board directors expressed a safety concern "if we start letting busses go all over the place".

The law gives districts the option to allow transportation across boundaries but does not require it. The State Board has often repeated that it is not free to reverse the action of a local board "absent proof that it was made arbitrarily, capriciously, without basis of fact, upon error of law, without legal authority, or unless it constitutes an abuse of discretion". It appears to be an established precedent that if a school board declines an invitation to enter into a transportation agreement with neighboring districts, and it has a valid reason for the denial, and if a student's particular safety situation is not serious enough to override the district's decision, the decision will not be disturbed by the State Board.

The decision of the Lake Mills Community School District board denying the appellant's request to enter into an open enrollment transportation agreement with Forest City Community School District is affirmed.