Opt-in Fails to Yield School Bus Cuts

Responding to a call from town government to try to reduce the cost of transporting students, the New Canaan Public School District launched an opt-in program for busing of middle and high school students this year. Transportation Coordinator Roy Walder told the Board of Education Tuesday night that the initiative actually resulted in a slight increase in the population asking for bus service.

Starting in April, the school district sent out letters to parents of students in grades 5-12 asking them if they planned to send their children to school on the bus. The district followed up with e-mails to families that had not yet responded in May, then with phone calls in June, and finally printed a newspaper article in August to prompt replies. When nearly everyone had responded, families had opted for bus service for about three quarters of New Canaan's students. That included a notable uptick in requests for high school juniors and seniors—252 students compared to 135 last year.

Kelly Kraus, the mother of a seventh grader and two high school students, told the board Tuesday that the repeated prodding may have provoked more parents to sign up for service. "I think people just said, 'fine, put them on a bus,” she said. Kraus suggested that the system be streamlined by adding the bus opt-in to the school registration process.

The transportation coordinator said the actual ridership was basically unchanged from last year.

"All we did was sensitize more people into asking for service," Walder said. "What we need to know is who wants to opt out."

The district did give parents of students in grades k-4 (who are automatically put on the bus schedule) the chance to opt out, but sent only a single letter pursuing replies.

"We didn't make a big deal of it," said Walder.

So the parents of only 17 elementary school students said they would drive their kids to school, while fully a quarter don't actually take the bus everyday. But the school district doesn't know who's riding and who isn't, which makes it practically impossible to adjust the routes and reduce the number of buses chartered.

Starting this year, parents of students at East School and South School can report if their child is being picked up at the end of the day or going home with a friend. Walder says West School is planning to implement the system too, and that could give the district some new information to help determine if there are buses that could be eliminated.

But there's no data like that for students in grades 5-12, and it's the ridership among fifth and sixth graders that Walder says really drives how many buses New Canaan needs.

Those students ride during the busy second morning run when 10 of the 14 buses the district charters are already heavily loaded with children going to South School.

"In terms of the fifth and sixth graders we have to cover the entire geography of the town of New Canaan," Walder said, and the district has only about half an hour to do it.

Board of Education members suggested that parents might be more likely to forgoe bus service if they knew each bus costs the town $75,000 a year and that the district can add a student to a bus route on short notice if necessary.

"If the parents know that they're really not using it and that they can have a spot in an emergency in 24 to 48 hours they may give up that spot,” said board member Jenny McMahon. 

Board member Amy Rochlin suggested that the district would need to try the opt-in initiative for another year to determine if parents would be as cautious about electing service the second time around.