The decision applies only to the new intake and will not affect those already with passes.
Nevertheless, coughing up £27.50 a month for a child's School Plus Metro card is no joke.
Parents will have enough to worry about with fuel hikes and projected increases this winter for gas and electricity.
What rankles is the way the council has drawn up this new criteria.
Under the old system pupils who lived more than two miles but less than six from their chosen school in Calderdale were automatically issued bus passes.
The new system, for reasons best known to those who implemented it, says that pupils can only get bus passes to their three nearest schools. And they include establishments outside Calderdale.
This means youngsters in Shelf and Northowram, traditional feeder areas for Hipperholme and Lightcliffe High miss out because they are closer to Queensbury, Buttershaw and Grange schools in Bradford.
The move has been attacked by Halifax MP Linda Riordan. And with good cause.
She points out that little if any consultation was carried out with parents and calls on the council to go back to the old system.
"It is time the council starting listening to parents on this issue as they should have done in the first place," she says.
Perhaps it is still not too late to do the right thing.