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SEPTA officials are urging families to be proactive, to start planning now for how their children will get to and from school next month. ‘

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All 55,000 students who ride SEPTA’s buses and trains will be affected by the agency’s self-described “doomsday” service cuts, according to Andrew Busch, SEPTA’s communications director.

Busch believes that students will have to wake up even earlier to get to class on time.

“It’s going to be much more difficult to get those kids to school,” Busch said. “[What] students and parents will probably need to prepare for is having students take more transfers than they normally do and certainly allowing for time to get to and from school.”

Agency leaders said the cuts were necessary to plug a $213 million budget hole.

Busch precautioned current students living in the city’s northeast and northwest neighborhoods, that they will be most affected.

“In those areas where there’s not as much density, the impact is going to be a little more just because things are spaced out a little more,” Busch said. “There’s not as much service in those areas, so when you take away some service, it can have a bigger impact in those areas where we’re not running as much service to begin with.”

“The closer we get to the 24th [of August], the more difficult it’s going to be,” Busch said. “We need about two or three weeks to either make a decision to go or not go with these cuts, so if we got into the 20th and funding hadn’t been approved, then we’d already be too late.”

A spokeswoman with The School District of Philadelphia said the district is working with its transportation department to gather information and communicate options to families.

For more details on the service cuts [CLICK HERE]

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SEPTA Says “Doomsday” Service Cuts Could Disrupt Philadelphia Students  was originally published on rnbphilly.com