The wheel$ on the bu$

Getting children to and from school is a major responsibility for school districts. It is also a major expense.

Transportation has been a topic of discussion in Baldwin for years, and at last week’s Board of Education meeting, John Robertson, a transportation consultant hired by the district, presented his findings after examining the district’s busing routes and practices, and recommended measures he said would save the district about $600,000 next year.

A long road
Two years after Baldwin passed a transportation referendum with promised savings of $1 million, the school district has begun to see large-scale savings. The trouble is, those savings have nothing to do with the referendum, passed in February 2013, which reduced the number of students eligible for busing by increasing the minimum distance they must live from their schools to be eligible.

The referendum did not provide the savings administrators thought it would, said Superintendent Dr. Shari Camhi, who took over the district last September, because the bell schedule at Baldwin Middle School was changed in September 2013. Prior to the passage of the referendum, the same buses that dropped students off at Baldwin High School went back out to pick up BMS students, since there was enough of a gap between start times. Now students at the two schools begin their days 48 minutes apart.

So, while the district is transporting fewer students, it never realized the savings originally planned. After researching what happened, Camhi said that the district did see some savings, but not to the extent administrators hoped.