Wheels on the Bus Could Stop

TRT file photo.

Wave of Budget Cuts Stun School Board

By Allie Hostler, Two Rivers Tribune

Busing students to schools not within their residential service area could end in the foreseeable future after a wave of state budget cuts pounded the Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School District (KTJUSD).

Busing is just one of the many services on the proverbial chopping block at KTJUSD. The elimination of the special education director position and the freezing of wages and hiring are among a few of the ideas an ad hoc committee will present to the school board as options.

KTJUSD Superintendent, Mike Reid convened a group of school staff to solicit ideas for areas to cut and how to best weather the waves of budget cuts that have already occurred and that he suspects will continue. Parents and members of the community are also welcome to participate. Meeting notices can be found on the district’s website.

“It’s difficult to understand why this is happening, when the district didn’t cause it,” Reid said.

The cuts come after a state triggered cut of $330,000 to KTJUSD’s transportation program. Instead of cutting transportation completely, KTJUSD decided to use some of its reserves to carry the program until a solution can be identified.

Reid explained that state cuts to school transportation services disproportionately affect rural school districts with Southern Humboldt being the most vocal in recent weeks. Southern Humboldt didn’t have the reserves to carry their transportation program plans to cut busing completely. Students, families, and school employees traveled to Sacramento last week to rally for a state senate bill that could temporarily fix the problem.

Senate Bill 81—which would restore $248 million in home-to-school transportation funding—might do just that, but Reid explained it’s just a six month solution that would buy school districts a little time to come up with alternative plans to fund transportation. Although the bill cleared the floor in the state assembly and senate, it awaits Governor Brown’s signature. Even if Brown signs the bill into law, he proposes to cut transportation for schools entirely in fiscal year 2013. As of press time the bill had not been signed, but advocates are confident it will be in the coming days.

Reid said a series of waves are hitting California schools. In January, schools lost $260 per student.Another state initiated cut was $580 per student, then another potential cut of $360 per student could occur if the governor’s tax initiatives aren’t passed by voters in November. The wave of cuts could total $1,200 per student.

“Suddenly a $6,000 kid becomes a $4,800 kid in less than six months,” Reid said. “There are about 1,000 students in the district, so it about $1.2 million lost in the district in less than six months.”

Stunned

When hearing about the extent of the state imposed cuts, Reid said the school board was “stunned.”

“We had to check on one board member to make sure he was OK,” Reid said. “He had his head between his hands and was non-responsive.”

But nonetheless, the board is planning a second study session to talk about a set of proposed cuts that would help the school weather the storm. The proposed cuts are really a band-aid over a gaping wound when considering what may be in store for the district.

Perhaps the biggest savings can be found in the district’s generous transportation service. Because Hoopa Elementary was classified as a program improvement (PI) school, provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act mandated that parents be given a choice about where their child attended school within the same district. As a result, buses were summoned to provide transportation for the shift in attendance patterns. Now about 62 students are bused to Trinity Valley from Hoopa to attend school there. Funding cuts could stop this service leaving parents to find transportation for their child if they wish to attend school outside of their residential area.

“It’s called intra-district policy,” Reid said. “Something the school board asked us to look at revisiting.”

Reid plans to have a revised intra-district policy for board review within the next couple of months, if not sooner. At this point, changes to the transportation service are only in discussion phase, however the school encourages participation from parents and community members.

Now that all of the schools within the district are in PI, the district is no longer mandated to provide transportation to other schools within the district.

If transportation from Hoopa to Trinity Valley was eliminated, five bus runs per day would cease, saving the district $660 per day which equates to about $115,500 per year.

Although increasing class sizes is part of the discussion, Reid said he doesn’t believe it’s the best solution at this point. “I don’t think this is the end of this tsunami. We’re going to keep getting hit and hit again,” he said.

The school board will meet on Tuesday, February 7 for a study session at the Community Day School in Hoopa at 3pm. And, the District Budget Committee will meet again on Wednesday, February 8 at 4pm in Room 101 at Hoopa Valley High School.

Reid emphasized how important it is to separate the district’s recent modernization projects from the state budget cuts explaining how the funds are from two completely different pools of money and are earmarked for specific purposes.