If a student in a Waterloo Region District School Board school isn’t eligible to ride a school bus, it’s up to the student’s parents to ensure they have a way to get to school.

But what if a parent has a disability that prevents them from being able to walk their child to school every day, and the child is too young to walk alone?

That’s the situation one Kitchener family finds itself in.

Sherrie Moore has cerebral palsy. When the weather is cold or rainy, she says, the disorder leaves her unable to handle the 20-minute walk to school with her son, Brady McEwan.

Since McEwan is in senior kindergarten at Wilson Avenue Public School, he can’t make the walk on his own either.

As a result, McEwan has missed multiple days of school because his mother couldn’t find a way to get him there.

“I feel helpless,” she said in an interview.

She’s asked if bus service could be made available, but been told that isn’t an option because McEwan doesn’t have a disability himself.

She says it was suggested at one point that an older student walk McEwan to and from school.

Moore says she has concerns about that idea.

“What if something happens? How are they going to get help?” she said.

For its part, the school board says it has a “policy that puts the children first” and declined to comment on any specific situation.

“There may be exceptional cases where we need to work with parents to provide alternative support,” said spokesperson Nick Manning.

Principals and superintendents are able to arrange for transportation options likes alternative bus service, subsidized taxis or rides from other parents in those situations, Manning said.

Earlier this week – more than a year after she first raised the issue – Moore was offered a meeting with board staff. She hopes it will lead to a solution.

“I need to find something that is permanent – I don’t want to fight this battle every year,” she said.

A similar case from Halton Region was heard at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal three years ago.

The tribunal ruled that the Halton District School Board had to put a stop closer to the home of a mother with mobility issues, even though her child had no such issues.

With reporting by Abigail Bimman