Bus-Budget Deficit Rx: Send Kids To School Near Home?

by Maya McFadden The New Haven independent

Mayor Elicker (right), with Supt. Negrón and school board VP Matt Wilcox: “I think the challenge here is that we have decided as a community to have School Choice and provide transportation to everyone who wants to chose to have their child go to any school in the city.”

As New Haven Public Schools’ (NHPS) transportation costs drive up the district’s projected budget deficit, Mayor Justin Elicker suggested that the city consider trying to send more students to school closer to where they live.

Elicker, who also sits on the Board of Education, offered that idea Monday in response to NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón’s presentation to the school board about how much the district spends driving students to and from school.

School leaders did not commit on Monday to any specific overhaul of how school transportation works. Instead, they took initial steps towards having a broader community conversation about cutting transportation costs by prioritizing sending kids to school closer to home.

NHPS recently reported that it expects to run a $12.9 million deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30. That projected deficit is driven in large part by a $10.8 million overage in the transportation budget.

School board members learned Monday that NHPS transports 17,476 students on a daily basis. Most of those students are bussed across town to school, many times bypassing several other schools closer to their home.

Even though NHPS spent $39,108,534 on transportation last school year, the district budgeted $32,313,964 for its transportation costs this school year. That ambitious goal, Board of Education Vice President Matt Wilcox noted Monday, came in large part from the district’s broader financial difficulties.

NHPS Chief of School Operations (CSO) Paul Whyte and Supervisor of Transportation and Student Transfers Sequella Coleman presented Monday that, of the 17,000-plus students that the district transports, 2,650 are charter school students, 1,826 are inter-district suburban students, 357 are Head Start students, 329 are unhoused McKinney Vento students, 302 are private school students, and 202 are students in outplacement programs who have special learning needs and IEPs.

NHPS transports these students through a two-tier system with contractor First Student. The first tier includes full-sized buses that have a typical capacity of 72 passengers. NHPS currently contracts First Student to operate 246 of those tier-one buses.

Tier two includes mini buses and vans. NHPS contracts a total of 85 of these vehicles for transportation related to special education, unhoused students, and outplacement.

The First Student contract also includes 20 unscheduled buses to be available for field trips and programming, including for the district’s career-pathway opportunities.

In addition to First Student, the district contracts cab-service providers for transporting outplaced, unhoused, and special-needs students. It also purchases bus passes to help students get to and from extracurriculars.

While fuel-cost numbers were not included in Monday’s presentation, fuel does play a part in NHPS’ overall transportation budget.

NHPS’ First Student contract requires it to pay for all bus fuel. Diesel buses are fulfilled by East River Energy under a city-negotiated annual rate. Unleaded buses are fueled up at local stations and are billed to NHPS at varying rates that are not locked into the contract.

NHPS also pays for summer programming transportation on top of its regular transportation contracts; the district spends around $196,000 for summer transportation, as well as $827,667 for special-education summer programing.

District leaders presented on Monday some cost-saving recommendations that NHPS is exploring. Those include shifting to an opt-in only plan for high school student transportation, eliminating summer transportation for grades K-4, changing the entirety of Riverside Academy’s student transportation from busing to bus passes, and consolidating 10 identified special-education bus loads.

In total, if implemented, those recommendations would save the district around $2 million.

“What we’ve seen in some places we have buses that have 49 people assigned to it but we have a ridership of 16,” Whyte said. In another case he said a bus was assigned 36 students but had a ridership of 7. Meanwhile, other buses are running close to full capacity.

Elicker urged the district to host community conversations around whether or not to change how the School Choice program works in order to achieve even larger transportation-related savings.

“I think the challenge here is that we have decided as a community to have School Choice and provide transportation to everyone who wants to chose to have their child go to any school in the city,” Elicker said.

He continued by stating that, “ultimately this is a question about where we want to put our money.” If some students ultimately have to “walk three blocks to their bus stop so that we can have more teachers in our schools, fix our playgrounds, that’s a decision that we have to have the courage as a community to make.”

Negrón added that real savings would come if NHPS developed “zones” whereby the district would “still be able to offer School Choice, because we believe in School Choice, but perhaps it can be something like knowing that when you apply, if you land in any school inside your zone, then yes you would get transportation, but knowing that if you decide to go outside your zone, understanding that transportation would have to be provided by you.”

While this would bring about the greatest savings, Negrón noted it would first require a lot of community dialogue to see if the community would have an “appetite” for that change.

Whyte said the district is considering hosting community conversations next school year about any proposed major transportation-related changes, like shifting to an opt-in program for high school buses.

District leaders also said Monday that the number of bus stops operated by NHPS has grown from 5,000 in 2019 to 7,000 today. “We are continuing analysis to see what other routes can be eliminated,” Whyte said.

Elicker requested that the district report on how much it spends annually on private school transportation, which required by state law. “It’s probably not a lot in the grand scheme of things but it seems pretty outrageous to me that we are required to do that,” he said.

During Monday’s presentation Whyte and Coleman also provided updates on NHPS’ electric-bus plans.

Coleman reported that First Student applied for a bus electrification grant in November but was not accepted. That grant is currently on hold by the federal government, she reported, and First Student was advised that they could be reconsidered for the funds.

Whyte said creating the minimal infrastructure for electric-bus charging would cost around $8.25 million in order to cover NHPS’ current 300-plus routes. Electric buses cost 3 to 4 times more than fueled bus, Whyte said.

Board of Education President OrLando Yarbrough requested NHPS’ fuel-cost history. He also asked to hear from First Student directly about the several grants it has applied for related to electrification to learn whether it is following through on considering New Haven for electrification plans, as was agreed on in the current contract.