North Syracuse, NY - Some Cicero-North Syracuse High School students will have to walk a little further to get home after school starting in September. The school board voted 6-0 tonight to amend and readopt a school transportation policy that previously required high school students to walk no more than 3/10ths of a mile. When the 2010-11 school year begins...
North Syracuse, NY - Some Cicero-North Syracuse High School students will have to walk a little further to get home after school starting in September.
The school board voted 6-0 tonight to amend and readopt a school transportation policy that previously required high school students to walk no more than 3/10ths of a mile.
When the 2010-11 school year begins in September, C-NS students will have to walk up to 5/10ths of a mile (or a half-mile) to get home in the afternoons only, Superintendent Jerome Melvin said.
The district plans to eliminate eight bus runs at the high school after school, which is expected to save $39,200, Melvin said.
"If you went up to C-NS anytime in the afternoon when the buses are leaving, you'll see many buses with very few students on them in the afternoons," Melvin said.
That's because many students are involved in athletic and extra-curricular activities after school. Some students who ride the bus in the morning sometimes ride home with their friends in the afternoon, the superintendent said.
"We just don't have the kids (on the buses after school)," Melvin said. "It's not cost efficient."
The North Syracuse school district plans to put a committee together this coming school year to look into bus routes and transportation for all students, in kindergarten through 12th grade, Melvin said. But the superintendent emphasized that the changes that take effect in September will only affect high school students, and in the afternoons only.
C-NS previously had roughly 45 "runs," or buses that took high school students to school in the morning and back home in the afternoon, said Wayne Bleau, assistant superintendent for business management.
By eliminating eight runs in the afternoons, school officials hope to have more students on the buses.
"A lot of the kids stay after school for co-curricular and athletics so now you have a bus that may have had 40 or 50 kids on it in the morning going in; going home it may only have 10 or 12 because they're all doing activities," Bleau said.
"What we're going to do is consolidate and maybe have one run cover these three areas and this bus will cover where those three were," he explained. "You can eliminate (eight runs) and have 25 kids on the bus and still get to your next run, rather than have a bunch of buses going around with eight and 10 kids on them."
Last year, when students only had to walk 3/10ths of a mile -- and when there were eight more runs --- buses drove into neighborhoods and dropped off students near their homes. Now, if the students live within a half-mile of the entrance to their neighborhood, Bleau said, the bus will drop them off along the main route.
"By doing this, we can have 25, 30 kids on the buses, where we were having 10, 12," he said.
Bleau said most of the students will not be impacted by the change. And some buses will continue to drive into neighborhoods to drop off students who live more than a half-mile away, he said.
By eliminating eight runs, the district won't have to pay as many drivers, the fuel for the bus or the maintenance on the vehicles, Bleau said. Also by lengthening some students' walk home in the afternoons, it will allow for the buses that are still operating to arrive on time for their next run at the middle schools.