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Thursday evening school board members in District 861 will review a host of potential changes for the district’s busing program and will revisit state laws on minimum busing services required.
Bus routes could undergo changes for the 2010-2011 school year due to a plan from Riverway Learning Community to forgo the district’s busing services.
In years past, the Minnesota City charter school has contracted with District 861 to transport eligible children from its population of 84 students.
But Riverway officials notified the district that beginning with the 2010-2011 school year the facility will keep state transportation aid and bus its own students to school.
District officials have said in the past that the aid for transporting charter school students often falls short of the district’s actual costs to do so.
Also Thursday, the board will review correspondence between Cotter schools and the district’s Transportation Department over a request that Cotter junior and senior high students be switched to the early bus in the morning but remain on late bus routes in the afternoon.
According to communications included in the board packet, Cotter officials would like to move 7-12th graders to a longer school day, but would need to shift transportation for 36 students in order to do so.
Officials offered to have the students dropped off at nearby locations currently used as drop-offs for elementary school programs to prevent the district from adding an additional stop at Cotter to the route.
But transportation coordinator Kari Shiroma, after reviewing the request with the District Transportation Committee, responded that juggling 36 students to a different bus tier would be too difficult for the district to make work.
The problem, Shiroma writes, is that only six of the district’s buses drop off students at either St. Mary’s Elementary or Jefferson Elementary, each about three blocks from Cotter.
The 36 Cotter students needing transportation, however, could reside anywhere in the district and may not be along the route of one of those six buses.
Rerouting or modifying existing routes puts the district in a difficult position, according to Shiroma, because routes are currently streamlined to be as economical and efficient as possible.
Lengthening bus routes to accommodate a large group of new riders could extend route times and push the district past its contracted schedule with the bus company, she said, which would cost the district money.
District 861 officials toyed with the concept of a lengthened school day last year to facilitate a different schedule at the high school but found the idea costly because of busing contracts.
Rather than adding services, officials may be considering a reduction in services as funding from the state, particularly for transportation, falls short of the district’s costs to do business.
At Thursday’s board meeting officials will review statutes that spell out exactly who the district must transport and how far, particularly because District 861 currently has a transportation policy much more liberal than the state’s.
By law, the district could reduce services to only transport students who live two or more miles from school for a savings of between $85,000 and $100,000.
As another alternative, the district could eliminate designated crossing hazards and offer a sliding fee for bus service between one and two miles from a school. Under that option the district could save between $40,000 and $60,000 per year, though the technical aspects of such a policy would require extra administrative time to implement.
The last option the board will have in front of them is to switch to a two-mile radius for busing but continue to acknowledge crossing hazards and transport those students without cost.
Crossing hazards are identified for each grade level and include things such as train tracks and busy streets.
The agenda items related to busing are for information only at Thursday’s meeting and the board is not slated to vote on any changes to the busing service.
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