Monfredo: Can School Bus Transportation Be Reduced?
Saturday, August 02, 2014
The goal of the joint meeting was to see if any savings could be attained and to review the process through an independent audit. “School Bus Consultants” out of Maryland did the review and pointed out ways of saving money, including not transporting students on the secondary level. The report also complimented the Worcester Public Schools for their handling of bus schedules, their promptness, and professional ability to deal with transportation problems, bus operations in school loading zones, the safe precautions taken, and the cleanliness of the buses.
The major savings would come from eliminating busing for Grades 7-12. This, in my opinion, would be an academic disaster, for at the present time we have a major chronic absentee problem in the secondary schools and without transportation the problem would add on to the over 20%-25 chronic absenteeism that exist in the secondary schools. Of that total over 80% are below grade level. This problem is particularly acute among students with low income families and among our Latino students.
Thus, transportation does factor in, for at the core of school improvement and education reform there is a need for our students to be present, engaged and accounted for…
However, other issues on transportation need to be examined, for the joint committee wants administration to consider greater utilization of buses, the cost savings of the elimination of buses vs. the downside of longer rides for students, combining bus stops, additional buses, making the tiers as uniform as possible, an opt out provision at the secondary level, expansion of the walk distances, where appropriate, to bus stops for students, increasing the length of routes, and review whether in some cases if special education students can ride on the same bus.
Brian Allen, chief finance and operations officer, did state that not providing transportation to students on the secondary level was not a option. He did restate the school department policy: ”Free transportation is granted to pupils in grades kindergarten to grade 12 who reside two miles or more from the school which they are entitled to attend. The legal obligation of the school committee is in this respect limited to provision for transportation for elementary children and the school committee does have the right, if necessary, to charge for transportation or not provide transportation at the secondary level regardless of where the students may live.” He also spoke about how special education costs have driven up the increase and that special education students represent 17% of students who are eligible for bus transportation.
The district transports nearly 11,000 students daily- including private school and charter school students- and it covers approximately 10,000 miles per day and 1.8 million miles per school year. In addition, 1,200 total daily routes take place using 187 buses. Other transportation services in the budget include self-operated Special Education Vehicles and half day pre-school programs, Head Start programs, Special Education transitions students to/from schools and worksites, mid-day shuttles for high school internships and other programs, and out of district Special Education, Vocational and McKinney-Vento Homeless Student Service. Needless to say, this is quite an undertaking by the school system.
The general findings of the audit’s report with respect to the transportation contract to be renewed later this Fall was an follows: Changing the current contract structure from a single daily rate to a variable rate based on hours, in order to have better control over cost reductions due to fluctuations in demand, changing from an annual bid price to an annual CPI for cost increases. The study did find that the Worcester Public Schools have been doing a good job in their transportation operation.
The next step will be for administration to consider the many suggestions generated by the committee and the audit, and then report back to the school committee with their recommendations.
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