DALLAS - New school zones have spurred parent complaints after they realized their children would have to walk by an area where several registered sex offenders reside and along a busy city street.

While children who live at the Parkwoods Apartments were able to take a bus to school last year, this year they were told they would have to find their own way to Brashear Elementary since they live less than two miles away.

But parents said the routes the children would have to walk along to get to the school are too dangerous.

"They said they're not going to give us bus service and the children are having to walk through a wooded area, plus there are sex offenders in the area," said Vicki Straw, grandmother to an 8-year-old girl.

Children from the apartment complex rode buses when they attended Webster Elementary, which was also less than two miles away. Parents said the district granted the complex bus service because of the risk of crossing Kiest Boulevard.

However, once the children's district reassigned them to Brashear, students lost bus transportation.

From Parkwoods Apartments there are two routes students can walk, which includes one route along Kiest Boulevard over to Hampton Road and north to school or north through a new residential area up to Glenfield and east to Hampton Road.

Parents aren't the only ones worried about the hike.

"When I got home I was relieved," said Paul Crockett, a sixth grader, who said he "faces" the walk to school.

Dallas police and state records show a registered child sex offender lives in an apartment children pass on their way to Kiest Boulevard, which is where they walk on a sidewalk but then have only a narrow patch of grass along Hampton Road after that.

Through the residential area, children must walk past two registered child sex offenders homes and then past two more offenders who both live in the 2500 block of Glenfield.

After a News 8 inquired, the Dallas Independent School District said, "The district will review the data and reassess the situation and add a new bus for that route if needed."

E-mail bwatson@wfaa.com