FEWER SCHOOL CHILDREN WILL BE ALLOWED TO RIDE BUS NEXT YEAR

Libby and Robert Roeger's kindergarten son rides the bus to school this year. Next year he probably won't.

The 7-year-old will either walk from Northfield Subdivision to Alma Schrader School or his parents will arrange a car pool with neighbors.

"We will car pool," Libby Roeger said. "We can't have him crossing Perryville Road. It's just too dangerous."

The Roegers are among hundreds of Cape Girardeau families measuring the distance from their homes to schools and wondering how their children will get to and from school next year.

In the $1.2-million budget-cut package approved in March, the Board of Education changed ridership eligibility limits from 1 mile to 1.5 miles for elementary students and to 2 miles for secondary students.

The cut is designed to eliminate three buses and save $57,000.

James Englehart, director of secondary education, said: "This item will probably touch more parents than any other item. It will touch parents in every attendance area and it will affect children.

"Up to this point the issues we have dealt with have been very narrow. But we can't reduce expenditures without affecting students."

If the new limit is strictly followed, approximately half of the district's school buses would be eliminated. The district operates 20 buses this year.

Englehart said that will not happen. The limit will be modified in some ways, but he said officials do not know just who will and will not ride buses next year.

The final decision concerning ridership eligibility will come from the Board of Education. Englehart expects the issue to be discussed at the May or June board meeting.

A number of variables come into play as school officials look at bus ridership.

The district has a policy that does not allow students to walk across "hazardous crossings."

Two streets are currently classified as hazardous: Kingshighway for all students and William Street for elementary students. A student, regardless of the distance of their home from school, is eligible to ride the bus if he or she lives on the opposite side of one of those streets.

With the new limits, Englehart said, the district will have to evaluate other streets to see if additional designations of hazardous crossing are needed.

City planners have provided Englehart with a map showing traffic counts on city streets. "This gives us an objective way to look at these hazardous crossing areas," he said.

In addition to the number of vehicles traveling on streets, Englehart said officials will look at traffic flow at key times and issues like sidewalks, crosswalks and traffic lights.

The district has a multiyear contract with Ryder Student Transportation for bus service. It pays Ryder $19,000 per bus.

The contract allows the school district to vary the number of buses used, up or down, by three. A change of more than three would void the contract, and a new agreement would have to be negotiated.

Englehart said, "There is no way to do our special education busing with only 10 buses."

In addition to transporting students from their homes to school, school buses make additional trips through the district, taking students from each elementary school to one site for special education classes. For example, gifted classes are taught at L.J. Schultz building; students from all six elementary schools are transported to that school.

While parents wonder about eligibility, Englehart said discussions about the bus issue are on hold as school officials await finalization of a computerized map of the school district.

The school, working with a computer firm in St. Louis, is computerizing the home addresses of students in the district, school boundaries and city streets.

Once that information is entered in the computer, school bus routes and stops can be calculated and adapted much more easily, Englehart said.

An April 30 meeting is set with representatives of the computer company to look at the new map and possible bus routes.

In the meantime, elementary principals are in the process of driving through their school districts trying to determine which houses and streets the new limit affects.

Englehart believes that the intent of the committee which made this suggestion was to eliminate three buses, not to create new boundaries.

He explained that changing ridership eligibility is the only way to eliminate buses.

"Our buses already run real close to capacity," Englehart said. "There is no way we could cut out three buses. We couldn't reduce one bus."

The new guidelines, he said, were meant as a maximum guideline. If the limits only need to be extended to 1.2 miles or some other distance, that is a possibility, Englehart said.

"I think the board has some flexibility," Englehart said. "I would say we will eliminate three buses. The board could decide to exceed three buses. That would be a possibility.

"The concern in every committee I was on was that if we just increased teacher load or reduced the number of teachers, the public would think we had just been wasting money before."

The bus operation costs $456,000. The district is reimbursed between 68 and 70 percent of that amount by the state. The actual cost to the district is $136,800.

Englehart said budget cuts across the board were based on 8 percent of the budget figure, not the actual expenditure.

The state allows school districts to receive partial reimbursement for transporting students who live between 1 and 3 miles from school. The law requires that students who live more than 3 miles from school be transported by bus to school.

Englehart said the new limits include most of the city.

The 2-mile limit for the junior high, for example, extends north to Sherwood and Perryville Road, south almost to Highway 74, and east into the Mississippi River. On the west, the circle would stop at Kingshighway because of that street's hazardous designation, he said.

The budget cut includes disadvantages to the district, Englehart said.

"How will this affect average daily attendance? I would predict that attendance will go down, especially on rainy days," Englehart said.

Additional car pools, an anticipated result of the change, would increase traffic congestion around schools.

When students walk to school or parents drop them off, students arrive earlier and stay later. Schools will need increased supervision before and after school, Englehart said.

Plus, he said, the budget cut will prove very inconvenient to parents. "Most people who work can probably get their children to school or home from school, but very few people have schedules that allow them to do both.

"Any of us who have worked with transportation know the inconvenience and hardship this places on families," Englehart said.