A school bus is parked on the road leading up to the Emily Follensbee School in southwest Calgary in June.A school bus is parked on the road leading up to the Emily Follensbee School in southwest Calgary in June. (CBC)

A bumpy gravel road that posed problems for disabled children on their way to and from their southwest Calgary school has been paved after years of complaints.

As CBC News reported in June, the parent council at Emily Follensbee School as well as the Calgary Board of Education had been asking the city to pave the bumpy 500 metres of road that was full of potholes.

Some of the students ride school buses in their wheelchairs and need to be strapped in. The parent council was so concerned about the special-needs students being injured that they filed an Alberta human rights complaint last month.

The road was paved over the weekend, said Michael Kenny, a parks manager with the City of Calgary.

"This was certainly on the radar screen but wasn't scheduled to be done for some time," said Kenny, who got the ball rolling on a solution.

'My wish would be that when issues like this are being addressed that they get done and people with disabilities get listened to before there has to be a huge complaint.'—Susan Shaner-Cortes, parent

Kenny said the road was in reasonable shape but would deteriorate quickly in wet weather conditions.

"We thought, you know, the parents did have a reasonable point and we were certainly listening and we tried to facilitate a solution and everything came together this year so it worked out well," he said.

The $325,000 price tag was split among three city departments and Enmax, which has a substation next to the school.

The parents say they will now drop the human-rights complaint.

"I think this is a lesson for the City of Calgary that accessibility is important for people with disabilities and you can't deny accessible roads or sidewalks for these individuals. They're just as important as typical people," said Susan Shaner-Cortes, chair of the parent council.

"My wish would be that when issues like this are being addressed that they get done and people with disabilities get listened to before there has to be a huge complaint or a threat of a human rights complaint."