Come this fall, Windham students may no longer get the door-to-door bus service they’ve come to expect.
For the past year, the Windham School Board has been hashing out a new transportation policy to cut fuel costs by clustering bus stops.
As the rising cost of fuel continues to pose a challenge for school districts, there is a general consensus that changes must be made to make bus service more efficient. But some members of the board are reserving judgment until they see what the actual cost savings will be.
On Tuesday night, May 23, there will be a public hearing for parents and the community to learn about the new transportation policy, held at 7 p.m. in the Windham Middle School cafeteria.
“We want to provide the service and have it be a safe service, but we have to take a hard look at the routes,” said Kate Brix, vice chair of the School Board, who’s been hard at work drafting the new policy.
The idea behind the new policy is to reduce the number of bus stops and, in effect, reduce the amount of miles traveled and fuel consumed.
Through a sophisticated computer program, the school has calculated and plotted the average distance a Windham student will have to walk if the new policy is put in place.
Younger students in kindergarten through the third grade would have to walk about a fifth of a mile to catch a bus, and older students would be required to walk about half-mile.
The School Board is also looking into “all-day” kindergarten to reduce bus runs that often cross paths as drivers drop off morning kindergarten students and pick up afternoon kindergarten students.
“Over the years, we’ve let a kindergarten student off here and there,” Brix said. “It really isn’t a smart and efficient way to do business.”
The other option is to geographically divide Windham and only provide afternoon kindergarten to students who live in one half of town and morning kindergarten to the other half.
The policy may also eliminate bus stops down private roads that are sometimes bumpy and dangerous to drive during the winter.
School Board member Toby Pennels sees the transportation budget as a prime area to cut costs without affecting the overall education of Windham students.
“The transportation business doesn’t have much to do with reading and writing,” said Pennels, who spearheaded the overhaul of the transportation policy. “We spend too much money on it.”
Pennels is also an advocate of splitting Windham in two halves for morning and afternoon kindergarten.
“(The buses) are literally passing each other in neighborhoods,” Pennels said. “If we divide up the geography, we can fix that problem.”
School Board member Mary Wassick however is reserving judgment on the new policy until she’s seen the cost savings.
“My concern right now is if we are going to get a big enough bang for our buck,” Wassick said. “And if that’s not the case, I don’t want to disrupt services.”
The cluster stops may prevent bus drivers from checking if parents are home for young children when they get off the bus, she said.
The new policy does however include a form for parents to sign if they want to allow the bus drivers to drop off their kids when they are not home.
Fuel costs for buses are up 14 percent this year at $117,000 with 5,000 gallons of gasoline and 35,600 gallons of diesel projected for next school year without any changes to the bus routes.
By press time, the school administration did not have an estimate of how much money the district would save under the new policy, but this information should be available before the public hearing on Tuesday.
School Superintendent Sandy Prince believes the policy is worth looking at, but whatever changes are made, the school district must make sure its safe for the school children.
“We are going out to every bus stop and cluster stop to make sure they are safe,” Prince said.
The new transportation policy is not final yet. After the public hearing on Tuesday, the School Board will continue to review the policy and make its decision based on cost effectiveness and public response.
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