Want a late bus? Not in Lawrence school district

The Lawrence school district is one of 16 Nassau County districts that do not provide late buses for its students. Out of 50 districts, 34 do offer late buses to the students.

The Lawrence Teachers Association posted its complaints on Facebook about the lack of late buses compared what is considered the generous size of the district’s budget. The LTA said it believes that afterschool buses should be made available to Lawrence Middle School and Lawrence High School students.

“It is not feasible, we service hundreds of schools most if not all have an arrival time around eight (a.m.), and a dismissal time around 3:30 (p.m.),” said Jeremy Feeder, Lawrence’s assistant superintendent of business and operation who oversees the district’s transportation. “This includes the public schools, all buses are used to do in/out transportation.” 

For the current school year, the district budgeted $14.74 million for transportation. That portion of the budget for 2024-2025, is expected to see a $3 million increase should the preliminary fiscal plan is approved by district residents on May 21.

“The current enrollment, cost of transportation and the number of busses needed keeps rising, additionally each year new costs arise,” Feeder said.

There are 15 other districts that do not provide late buses for their students.

“We’ve never done that, it’s not budgeted like that sometimes parents ask but we have no budget for it,” said Linda Greene, the transportation supervisor for Garden City’s schools.

North Shore School District noted, “It’s never been offered because it would need to be provided to all five public schools as well as all private and parochial schools,” said Shelly Newman, public relations representative for the district. 

Within the 34 school districts that offer late buses for the students, the districts differ on why late buses are provided.

“It’s board policy to provide late busing to district students, it is decided based on budgetary needs that the district has to provide that service,” said Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District Director of Transportation, Thomas Volpe. “Once it’s a policy it gets renewed ever year automatically, unless of budgetary reasons the district cannot afford it and they will change the policy and not provide late bus transportation.”

Long Beach Public Schools builds in late buss to the drivers work schedules for the week, said John Toups, transportation supervisor at Long Beach Public Schools.

“It’s built in to the hours for our bus drivers, they are contracted to work 30 to 40 hours a week and we provide our own buses and drivers for our school district,” Toups said.

On the State Education website it is noted that ”School districts are not required to provide late bus transportation by law, if they do it must be equally available to all religious/independent and public schools.”

“The budget services many aspects of a school district, not just transportation,” Feder said.

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