Betty Ray wouldn’t be caught dead riding a bicycle or walking on 31st Street. And she certainly doesn’t want her 14-year-old son getting to school that way, either.

But because of a Lawrence school district decision to tighten the list of those who qualify for free bus rides, that’s what’s going to happen.

“Kids from South Junior High will have to go on 31st Street without sidewalks or bike trails in all that traffic around 3:15,” Ray said. “We want either bus rides or sidewalks and trails where it’s safe for kids to ride.”

So Ray, who said she couldn’t afford the district’s $260 pay-to-ride fee to put her son on a bus each morning, began two weeks ago walking door-to-door in her southeast Lawrence neighborhood with a petition for city to build sidewalks along the busy road, where traffic often exceeds the posted 45 mph speed limit. She had collected about 100 signatures by Tuesday afternoon.

“We understand the school district is in trouble,” said Ray, whose son rode the bus for free last year. “We just want our kids to be safe. The city ought to do something for our children to walk to school.”

Her quest is part of the fallout of a state budget shortfall putting the squeeze on cities and school districts across the state. In Lawrence, one solution to state funding cuts was a reduction in the number of students who qualify for free bus rides.

But the school district isn’t the only entity reeling from state budget problems. The shortfall also has put the squeeze on city and county governments.

David Corliss, assistant city manager, said he hadn’t heard about the petition but that the city did not have plans to place a sidewalk along 31st Street.

“In the past, we’ve tried to respond to citizen and school requests as far as sidewalk installations,” Corliss said. “But we have a limited budget for sidewalk installation.”

Without having studied the option, Corliss said he didn’t know whether it would be a good idea to put a sidewalk on 31st Street.

“History has taught us that it’s difficult to make improvements on that road,” he said. “So I don’t want to speculate what would happen there.”

Rick Gammill, the district’s director of transportation, safety and facilities planning, said he understood parents’ safety concerns.

“That’s why busing is offered in the area that this child lives in,” he said, noting that other transportation options included the city transit system or carpooling. “We’ve had to come up with revenue enhancements, and pay-to-ride is just one of several that we were able to come up with in order to enhance revenues for the school district. We anguished over that for months.”

Fees for the pay-to-ride bus program jumped by $20 a year on Monday, when the early registration deadline passed. The cost is now $260 per year for students in first through 12th grades who meet distance eligibility requirements.

Patty Fuller, who lives on Haskell Avenue and also has a son who will have to walk or bike to South Junior High in the fall, said she had talked with other parents in the area who were in the same predicament.

“This area is middle- to low-income,” she said. “I don’t think the city or the school system gave us enough time to prepare for this.”