Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Board member Mariam Khan: Let's still talk about better bus schedules.
Hamden’s Legislative Council has agreed to transfer $585,000 to the Board of Education (BOE) in order to fund school bus rides this September — reversing a previous decision that had sparked a now-shelved plan to change bus schedules.
That happened Monday at a meeting in Council chambers.
Members voted unanimously in favor of granting the BOE the extra $585,000, the amount that Hamden Schools Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola said is necessary to avoid changing or consolidating bus routes after the district’s transportation contract with First Student jumped 16 percent over last year’s agreement.
The town will use proceeds of a $15 million school sale finalized in June after negotiations had wrapped up on the new fiscal year budget.
Monday night’s decision supports the town’s temporary fix to several larger problems highlighted during a tight and contentious budget season — all of which town representatives said they hope to find sustainable solutions for in the future.
The primary concern is Hamden’s busing schedule itself. Broader strategy questions concerning budgeting, planning, problem-solving and communicating have both guided and distracted from that conversation.
The money transfer means that Hamden’s busing schedule can stay the same next year. Students will arrive and depart their classes following a four-tier, “built-to-be-late” (in the words of Ariola) schedule that delivers high schoolers to Dixwell Avenue by 7:30 a.m., crowds middle schoolers into a cramped drop-off arena by 8:15, and drops off elementary students on a split distribution schedule, with some youth beginning their school day at 8:15 and others at 8:45.
In an early effort to cut costs, Ariola had pitched a plan to save the district over $500K while improving the general efficiency and timeliness of school buses. Read more about that idea here. The plan included switching to a three-tier system and establishing a uniform elementary school start time while widening the time between when the district’s schools started in order to allow drivers more time to get where they’re going (hopefully and typically to schools).
Then parents expressed concerns about a 9 a.m. elementary school start time increasing daycare costs and disrupting their work schedules. In response, the BOE chose to recalibrate — by weighing community members’ opinions, and asking the council for more money one more time during a private “leadership meeting.”
During a public BOE meeting, elected officials accepted the council’s offer of more money — but bashed them for supposedly holding out beforehand. “Vote them out!” proclaimed David Asberry, a newly elected BOE rep who ran on the same slate as many of the individuals who voted to flat-fund the board.
Board members suggested it was the council’s poor decision making that left them with no funds to pay for school buses. The council responded Monday with a series of corrections and pleas for stronger foresight — and politeness — moving forward.
“I was disheartened to hear such harsh statements from the BOE on Tuesday,” Council President Dominique Baez said. She argued that the BOE originally provided a lower projected cost for busing, which the town used to allot the town’s money before the First Student contract was officially determined.
The town was able to return to the topic thanks to the sale of Wintergreen School, which put more money in the town’s pockets. They considered multiple options, Baez said, to support the BOE, including paying for additional buses or subsidizing daycare costs.
Council member Katie Kiely clarified that the BOE had, in fact, already cut buses from their budget while working with the mayor’s office to create a preliminary budget because transportation costs had surged. While the council did deny the board an additional $600,000 requested by school administration, Kiely posited that that lump of money was not originally attached to a busing budget line.
“This is a bailout from the Legislative Council to the Board of Education,” Council member Justin Farmer, who, like Baez, voted against sending an extra $600,000 to the board back in April.
Moving forward, he said, it is up to the Board of Education to provide more precise numbers in a timely fashion for the council to consider.
Board of Education Representative Mariam Khan, meanwhile, argued that the town should reconsider school start times moving forward — through an intensive process of public participation and focus groups that considers the problem holistically and not through a lens of financial scarcity. Later start times for high schoolers and earlier days for elementary students, for example, could help students learn to the best of their potential.
“Our kids and our community deserve more than polemics,” she stated.
Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.
Another fiscally irresponsible, patch-work measure from the most fiscally mismanaged town in the state. Hamden needs to learn to live within its means, and modifying a bus schedule is a relatively painless way to do so.