HILLSBOROUGH: Officials to modify bus plan for private school students

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
School district administrators were to meet yesterday, Wednesday, with their private school counterparts and a transportation contractor to try to tweak a plan that will provide busing to about 108 Hillsborough children who attend Catholic schools in the Somerville area.
The Hillsborough school district has said it can provide private-school busing only by using "cluster" pickup points as opposed to end-of-driveway stops.
One bus would transport high school-aged students to Immaculata High School, and another would go to Immaculate Conception (in Somerville) and St. Ann’s (in Raritan) elementary schools. Both buses would have a capacity of 54.
The 20 to 30 families who send their children to Christ the King elementary school in Manville would receive the $884 payment in lieu of busing as was the case last school year.
The bid is handled by the county Educational Services Commission with Hillsborough paying the cost.
Parents of private-school children appeared resigned, with less than two weeks before school starts, to accepting "cluster" stops at intersections with main roads, but still feared any new arrangement would mean lengthier rides for students.
Each of the planned two bus routes would wend around the entire breadth of the 54-square-mile township.
Last year, students typically caught the buses before 7 a.m. Parents are concerned their children could be on buses more than four hours a day this school year.
Business Administrator Aiman Mahmoud said Wednesday’s meeting would work on timing of routes and location of cluster stops in an effort to try to make them more convenient to families.
Private school enrollment for Hillsborough students has decreased this fall — meaning one less bus will be used — increasing the per-pupil cost. However, the main reason for changing the transportation system seems to lie with Hillsborough eliminating the "tiered" bidding of bus routes for 2014-15, said parent Tim Florin at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
In a tiered system, bus routes are designed so a contractor could double up on routes to schools. A company could transport students to the Catholic schools, then return to Hillsborough to bus public school students. That lessens the cost to the contractor and allowed the school district to stay under the $884 per-student cap on private school busing costs.
Non-public routes were taken off the tiers this year, in part because buses were arriving late at the Auten Road Intermediate School. (Part of the problem may be that last year the public school district changed start times at some schools in a realignment of routes that saved the district more than $900,000 in busing costs.)
In an email to the school administrators made available to the Beacon, parent Steve DelSordo said, "It is completely understandable that changing public school times enables the administration to save transportation costs, but there was no conscious effort to work with the non-public schools at an early date to participate in the process so that Hillsborough children attending the Catholic schools could be afforded consistent and safe transportation."
No busing would hurt the Catholic schools, perhaps dissuading parents from sending their children there, Mr. DelSordo said.
"It is a tremendous selling point to the non-public schools to say they have busing from Hillsborough," he said.
Superintendent Jorden Schiff said at Monday’s meeting that it’s better to have some busing" than none.
Mr. DelSordo wrote busing from cluster stops "where parents have to drop off or pick up their children is essentially the same as no busing for working parents, yet now those parents do not get the aid in lieu of transportation to help with potential after-care costs."
Mr. DelSordo wrote, "In effect, the administration is providing themselves with a way out of complaints from Hillsborough parents because they can easily say, ‘This is what the Catholic schools negotiated, and you will have to take it up with them.’ "
Parents with children of different ages face the prospect of having to be at two rendezvous points at the same time, he said.
He also raised the safety issue of having children walk distances to and from the cluster stop. He said he found it "absurd" that a bus for public high-schoolers makes three stops in his neighborhood, but his 8-year-old will be dropped off a half mile from his house.
In a related action, the school board accepted the resignation of district Supervisor of Transportation Debra Espinosa. She would be replaced by Marcy Decker, who would be paid an annual salary of $85,000, effective Oct. 18, or sooner if released from her present job.