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Letter from School Board Regarding Busing |
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The Barre Town School Board has a long tradition and pride in examining systems to provide the best education that is most efficient and fiscally responsible. These past two years we have initiated a renewed investigation into our transportation system to determine how busing can be done more efficiently to benefit children, parents, and the taxpayers. During the 1970’s, our school peaked at just fewer than 1400 children without kindergarten students. Enrollment has steadily decreased and we are presently at 835 children including kindergarten. We now graduate more children than we are enrolling in kindergarten and this trend is projected to continue for the foreseeable future. A comparison report of similar Vermont elementary districts revealed that our spending for transportation is the second highest in the state, with 6% of our budget, more than $600,000, spent for busing. The state average is closer to 3% of budgets. Studies conducted at our school determined that approximately 600 students are riding the buses to and from school. We operate 10 buses, have 2 spares, and a special needs bus that accommodates wheel chairs. Due to the geographic configuration of Barre Town, we cover 112,500 miles yearly transporting children to and from school in two waves with two different start and ending times for our school. Our 72 and 77 passenger buses and small special needs bus transport children to and from all the distant areas of our town. Some children often have rides of up to one hour on buses that are carrying far fewer students than their capacity. Barre Town School owns our buses, employs our drivers and has a maintenance agreement with the Town to service and store our buses. We will keep this in place! Nearly a month ago, we brought four options to a public hearing and now have reduced these to two options for savings due to decreased enrollment. The first option would involve shifting to a one-wave system in which all Barre Town students would start and end school at the same time. In this option we may have to lease a bus or use one or two of our buses to complete very short routes close to school and then return for second short routes. The second option is to revamp our present two-wave system to fewer buses with longer bus routes and longer rides for students. We do not believe long bus rides are good for our students. Changing to a one-wave system would mean that the entire school would be on one schedule. This would benefit the entire school system, as all personnel (administrators, teachers, para-educators, nurses, maintenance) would be present at the school at the same time. After school clubs and sports for the older children will continue and the YMCA will be extending the vacation camps to an after school program in September. Further benefits include allowing families to be on one schedule for a drop off time, pick up time, or a one bus stop time. Our transportation department has drawn up proposed bus routes that reflect approximate stops and numbers of children at stops. Procedures as to the number of children at stops, assigned seating, safety measures, and discipline have been considered. We have also looked at sending one or two late buses to central locations if needed due to sports practices, music activities, etc. Parents have volunteered and others will be encouraged to join a committee to look at the implementation of one-wave transportation system. Numerous internal, board, and commission studies dating back to 1991 have studied our transportation system. As early as 1995, the New England School Development Council (NESDEC) concluded that our costs of transporting 1200 students were inordinately high. Even then, a one-wave bus system was studied and many benefits were identified, but it would have involved purchasing 10 more buses. Our present enrollment allows for us to switch to a one-wave system using our present bus fleet. We feel this will be a more efficient use of resources, a more effective schedule for the school, help families with their schedules, and benefit taxpayers. It is estimated that a one-wave system will save up to $150,000. These savings will help in building our future budgets. We are mindful that state funding of educational costs will be much lower as the legislature enacts Challenges For Change. There is an article on the Barre Town May 11th ballot that addresses petitioning the School Board to keep the two-wave system. We urge you to consider our thoughts about Barre Town’s transportation system and contact any of us with your questions or comments. We, as elected officials, are aware that this is an advisory vote. A majority vote of NO will validate the work that we do to provide quality education with fiscal responsibility to you. Your voice is valued. Appreciatively,
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Dear Barre Town Community Members,