A proposal to eliminate courtesy busing for 48 students who received it in the past was approved on July 19 by the Jackson School District Board of Education.
Beginning in September, 48 children who live in the Flair development will no longer be bused to the Holman elementary school. Now those children will be required to walk to school.
The board, which was also planning to remove courtesy busing for children who live in Robbin Estates, tabled that action on July 19. Those students also attend the Holman school.
In addition to eliminating courtesy busing for 48 pupils in the Flair development, the board approved a plan to implement cluster bus stops.
With cluster bus stops — a bus stop where many children get on a bus, rather than a series of bus stops in the same neighborhood where only a few children board the bus at each stop — in place, some children may be required to walk up to 900 feet from their previous bus stop to reach one of the new cluster bus stops.
The proposed plan was a two-pronged approach to reduce the school district’s $8 million transportation budget, according to district administrators.
“In this day and age, we have to think of ways to increase efficiency and save taxpayer dollars in the process,” Jackson Superintendent of Schools Thomas Gialanella said.
In regard to eliminating courtesy busing for some students, “We basically asked ourselves if we had any neighborhoods where it was safe to change [from a busing neighborhood] to a walking neighborhood,” school district Business Administrator Michelle Richardson said.
Requiring students to walk to school is nothing new to the district; almost 400 students at the Rosenauer and Johnson elementary schools have walked since those schools opened.
“What we did was apply the standard for those schools to the others. This practice is not new,” Gialanella said. “We always considered these changes with the safety of our students [in mind].”
Courtesy busing is bus transportation the school district provides at no additional cost to students who live close to the school they attend. The school district is not mandated to provide busing to those students and does so as a “courtesy.”
During the 2010-11 school year, about 2,100 students in Jackson received courtesy busing.
In addition to cutting back on the number of students who receive courtesy busing, the implementation of cluster stops will result in about 170 bus stops eliminated, according to administrators.
Officials said cutting the number of bus stops will reduce wear on the district’s buses, lower the total mileage driven (currently 2.4 million miles per year) and reduce gas consumption (currently 350,000 gallons of fuel per year).
To parents in attendance at the meeting, the efficiency proposed in the board’s plan was not enough when it came to the safety of their children. “We have some undesirable people on our street who have been arrested for dealing drugs from their home,” said Petra Leone, a resident of Robbin Estates. “I don’t want my kids getting hit by some idiot going 50 miles per hour just to get their fix.”
Reported incidents of drug activity and traffic violations in Robbin Estates, where 79 students who attend the Holman school would have been required to walk to school, became the main focus of concern.
“Our children play outside and we watch these people fly up and down the road,” resident Mary Reilly said. “That is very dangerous and it’s a problem.”
“We go to great lengths to protect our children today with helmets and curfews. Now you are asking us to make our kids walk to school in the street?” resident Harry Beals asked the board. “When it snows, the street is just slush and ice. To ask children to walk to school with no sidewalks is not safe at all.”
Board member Barbara Fiero made a motion to table the proposed Robbin Estates changes. The board members voted to table that portion of the proposed changes.
The other changes were approved in a unanimous vote of the board members.
“Tonight was a great example of the public coming out and providing us with the information we need to make the right decision,” board President Sharon Dey said. “We hope to see more meetings like this, especially when the budget rolls around.”
There will be a question-and-answer session regarding the busing issue with the school district’s transportation director in the administration building on Aug. 2 from 4 to 6 p.m.
— Contact Andrew Martins at [email protected]