Some Dunklin County schools cutting back on transportation

With the state cutting funds for transportation, districts across Missouri are faced with the challenge of coping with the decreased budget.

In June, Gov. Jay Nixon cut about $70 million in school transportation from the fiscal year 2011 budget, causing districts to reconsider their current transportation situation.

While some districts, such as the Bayless School District in St. Louis, have announced they will eliminate busing to and from school starting with the upcoming year, local districts have taken a different approach.

Two local districts have combined routes as a cost cutting measure, while two others have decided to make no changes to their service.

At Senath-Hornersville, Superintendent Larry Wood said the decision has been made to combine some of its routes to offset cuts.

"We have taken four routes and combined them into two, which are the routes around Rives and the ones that run up towards Kennett," Wood said. "We have not shut down any routes or any town routes or anything like that. We are going to continue to do them and go this year and see what happens."

The Southland School District has changed their route schedules, combining them into three routes from four.

This change was made prior to current Superintendent Kim Campbell taking over the district.

"They did that before I came in," Campbell said. "I have talked with [former Superintendent Raymond Lasley] and they have condensed it down from four routes to three routes to offset the cuts."

Campbell said he is not sure yet how much the changes will save on the current budget.

The Southland District is also hoping to put off the purchase of a new bus for a few years, however, that all depends on the wear and tear of the current fleet.

"If you go from four routes to three routes and then not have to buy a bus in the normal rotation, over the next two or three years, that is probably a pretty significant savings for our district," Campbell said.

Holcomb Superintendent Jeff Bullock said the district has made the decision to leave the routes "as-is."

"We are so spread out, condensing the routes would be really tough," Bullock said. "We have such a large area to cover."

Bullock said it would not be to the benefit of the students to make them get on the bus an hour earlier and get them home an hour later.

"We weighed it out and we talked about it with the board and for now, we would like to leave them as-is," Bullock said.

Superintendent Chris Wilson said the Kennett School District will also not be making any changes to its current routes, and will absorb the costs of continuing their routes as-is.

Wilson said Kennett will also not be purchasing a new bus this school year.