What is the current situation?

Today, most students in the Province, particularly in rural areas, travel to and from school by school bus. A reality of the current system is that in order for students to attend denominational schools, they may be bused out of their own community to attend a denominational school in another community even though there might be a school nearer their home they could attend. There are also cases of cross-busing where, for example, students from town A are bused to town B to attend school while students in the same grades from town B are bused to school in town A. The Government believes these situations are unnecessary and should not exist within the new interdenominational school system.

Each day of the school year, about 80,000 students travel to and from school by school bus. Student busing is provided through a combination of district-owned buses and contracted services. During the 1995/96 school year, the cost to provide these services was $30,794,000 or an average of about $400.00 per student. This amount is almost triple the level of funding provided for instructional materials and equipment and triple the level of funding provided for maintenance of school buildings. Government is concerned about inefficient and duplicate school busing and the resulting high cost of student transportation. The cost of operating these buses uses a large portion of the money the Province earmarks for education and despite the declining number of students, this cost has been steadily increasing over the years. Figure 6 shows how the annual cost of student transportation has increased since the 1970/71 school year. In recent years, attempts have been made to gain efficiencies thereby reducing the cost of school busing.

What changes are proposed?

Government is anxious to operate the system of student transportation in a more practical and cost-effective manner. But to achieve this, a number of changes may have to occur including:

-in general, entitlement to busing would be to the nearest school;

- enforcing the number of stops a school bus makes (currently buses are permitted to stop four times within a 1.6 kilometre distance); and

- adopting a system of staggered opening and closing of schools, where practical, in areas where several schools exist. That is, schedule the times schools open and close to permit the same bus to make additional runs. This may require some schools to open earlier or close later. For example, one school might open at 8:45 and another at 9:15. This would reduce the number of buses required to transport students.

As well, we have to consider other questions such as the following:

- whether it is reasonable to increase the distance for school bus eligibility beyond 1.6 kilometres;

- whether the distance for school bus eligibility should be increased for high school students in favour of keeping the distance at 1.6 kilometres for primary and elementary students;

- whether it is reasonable for the taxpayers of the Province to continue to pay the full cost of school busing or whether users of the system should pay some portion of the total cost;

- what should be considered a reasonable busing time (with declining enrolments and the larger geographical areas to be covered, busing times may increase and some students may have to be on a school bus for over 60 minutes); and

- whether parents would choose a longer period of time on the school bus for students to attend a larger, well-resourced school or a shorter bus ride for students to attend a smaller school with fewer teachers and resources.