West Hempstead school district reviews transportation practices

Standing before a packed board room in the Chestnut Street School last week, Dr. Ross Haber told West Hempstead Board of Education trustees and district administrators to consider creating centralized bus stops and capitalize on shared services with other school districts if they want to improve efficiency in their transportation budget.

Those suggestions, among others, were well-received by several board trustees, who were excited to begin exploring options for reducing the cost of transporting some 2,100 district children to and from 93 different schools in and out of the district.

Administrators hired Haber, of Ross Haber Associates Inc., as a transportation consultant last year after it became clear that having a transportation budget that makes up nearly 10 percent of the total budget ($54 million for the 2011-12 school year) was unsustainable.

“We know we transport students well and relatively efficiently,” Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham said, “but we felt, considering the size of the budget, that we should get another set of eyes in here — somebody who has seen operations in many different places — to give us an analysis and some feedback of how we might be able to do things better … and perhaps find ways to economize what we do and still get students to school.”

In his research, Haber found that several of the district’s transportation practices could be changed to reduce spending:

• Expand the requirement for walking distance: The district provides transportation for all students in kindergarten through fifth grade attending in-district schools (Chestnut Street, Cornwell Avenue, George Washington, Hebrew Academy of Nassau County and St. Thomas the Apostle) who live three-quarters of a mile or more away from the school. The distance limit for sixth-graders is one mile and for students in seventh through twelfth grades it’s a mile and a half. The state walk distance limits are two miles for K to 8 and three miles for 9 to 12.