Every rider counts
By Jo Porter
Each school day, the Issaquah School District Transportation Department transports about 8,500 students on 150 buses to 23 schools on routes covering 7,200 miles. Optimal routes are designed by experts using complex computer systems and gPS data. A typical run wastes no time between picking up and delivering high school, middle school, early-start and late-start elementary school, and half-day kindergarten students. The bell times are so interdependent that starting secondary schools just 15 minutes later or dismissing elementary schools 15 minutes earlier without shifting the entire system would require an extra 41 buses costing $4,242,000 plus an additional $1,123,006 per year to operate the less efficient routes. (Not to mention the expense of an extra facility to house the buses and the effort to recruit an additional 41 bus drivers.) The operational cost alone of such a schedule change represents about 15 teaching positions! We never lose sight of the fact that we are here to educate students. That means our drivers put the utmost priority on getting students safely to and from school. What you may not realize, however, is how vigorously we try to ensure that our bus operations spare every penny possible for classroom instruction.
The state funds only about half of the district’s actual transportation costs, which means we bridge the $3.2 million annual shortfall through local levy dollars that would other- wise go to schools and classrooms. Because the state’s funding formula is based on a head count of students riding our buses, we can maximize our revenue by getting every regular rider on the bus during count days.
In past years, drivers counted every student rider for the state during a specific week in October. This year, there is a new methodology: Drivers will count student riders every day for one month in the fall, winter, and spring during the morning and afternoon routes. The state will use the three consecutive days of highest ridership during each season to determine the district’s overall transportation funding, so it’s very important that all regular riders take the bus to and from school whenever possible. This has the added benefit of reducing gridlock on and around school campuses before and after school.
The flip side of maximizing reve- nue is maximizing what we do with it. On top of underfunding school transportation, the state over the past three years has cut more than $16 million from the district’s annual operations budget—a gigantic hit. That means it’s more important than ever for the Transportation Department to run efficiently to keep dollars flowing to classrooms. While several communities have been directly affected by becoming “walking areas” (the state expects students who live within one mile of school to walk and provides no bus funding for them), every family feels the effect daily. How? School start and dismissal times are so tightly interwoven around efficient bus routes that they could hold water.
Please remember: get all regular riders on the bus whenever possible, and never hesitate to contact us at 425.837.6330 if you have questions about routes or anything else throughout the school year.
Recent Comments