We've got some very sad news to report.

A 6-year-old girl died today after she was struck by a vehicle. She had just gotten off a school bus shortly after 1:30 p.m.

The Green Elementary student was struck near the intersection of North Hills and Hillock drives in Raleigh by a vehicle driven by 83-year-old woman.

UPDATE

Click here for the online story. According to witnesses, the driver ignored the bus stop arm and flashing signals.

School officials are saying they'll have the bus routes for traditional-calendar schools online by tomorrow afternoon.

You should be able to find the bus routes by clicking here on Friday. School officials are cautioning that bus routes may go through many revisions between now and the end of September.

The routes are adjusted as Transportation responds to ongoing student registration, parent requests and ridership decisions. Click here to download the form for requesting a change to a bus stop.

The school board had a pretty busy day today.

The board elected Kevin Hill as the new chairman and agreed on a procedure for soliciting applicants to fill Rosa Gill's seat.

The board trimmed $3.3 million out of the budget after getting less than requested from commissioners.

CORRECTED LINK FOR BELL SCHEDULE STORY

It looks like parents aren't going to have quite as much flexibility as they would have hoped having their kids ride different buses in the afternoon.

Last month, the school board told staff to put in policy wording that officially says principals can allow students to ride on different buses. But at the urging of principals, board members asked staff to strip out the wording on Tuesday.

Here's the quick background:

The question of who has the longest bus rides was also on the minds of school board members on Tuesday.

As noted in today's article, staff stressed that voluntary magnet kids account for a majority of the longest bus rides in the district. But students who are bused for diversity also are in the group with the longest rides.

Bob Snidemiller, senior director for transportation, explained that the longest 5 percent of bus ride times have an average one-way ride of 64 minutes.

You can't say the school board isn't doing something to help parents with childcare for the upcoming school year.

As noted in today's article, the board told staff to make it easier for parents to request that their children be dropped off at different bus stops in the afternoon.

Currently, you're only supposed to be dropped off in the afternoon at the same stop where you were picked up in the morning. Exceptions are made for daycare centers and after-school centers that are along on your route.

Would a student lie about being homeless to get assigned to a particular school or to ride the bus?

Those were some of the questions that popped up during this week's facilities committee meeting. Eddy Adams, senior director for transportation, said there have been cases when students claiming to be homeless demand bus service.

Adams said people have actually seen cases where students are dropped off from a Mercedes and claim to be homeless. He acknowledged it could be a friend of the student who is driving the car.

School districts are being warned they might have problems getting fuel for school buses this week.

The State Department of Public Instruction says fuel vendors are saying that Hurricane Ike has disrputed their fuel supplies. This has left some school districts with only a day or two of fuel remaining.

While Wake says it's ok, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools is in emergency mode after having not gotten two shipments of fuel. Charlotte has cancelled field trips, middle school sports and tutoring to conserve its supply. 

UPDATE

Read Charlotte's press release.

Today's newspaper doesn't have a lot of great news for Wake's school transportation department.

As noted in an article by Kinea, a first-grade student from Stough Elementary was dropped off at the wrong stop last week. It's at least the third time it's happened this school year.

In a separate article in the North Raleigh News, a mother of a Hilburn Drive Elementary first-grader said her son's first two weeks on the bus were nightmarish. She said his bus broke down twice, didn't come once and injured him when his foot was caught in the door.

Here's the memo outlining the specifics on how Wake hopes to make sure kindergarten and first-grade students get to and from school without incident this year.

The memo, which was referenced to in a prior post, lays out the specifics about the identifying information that should be on the name tags for these young bus riders.

The memo also says that kindergarten and first-grade students should sit on the right side of the bus, beginning with the first seat. If possible, they're to be seated by stop location.

Whether these steps avoid a repeat of how two young children were dropped off at the wrong location last month remains to be seen.