End to busing outside city aired
About 1,500 students who live in Buffalo but attend nonpublic schools outside the city would lose bus service next year under a proposal considered Wednesday evening by the Buffalo Board of Education.
The plan, which was tabled for further study, is designed to save about $1.1 million in 2009-10, when the district anticipates that severe cuts in state aid could leave it with a budget gap of as much as $45 million.
“We’re preparing for the worst,” said Gary M. Crosby, the district’s chief financial and operations officer. “We’re going to get clobbered. We have to be very parochial and take care of [our own] students.”
The cuts would eliminate morning and afternoon bus service for:
• Nearly 1,000 students from Buffalo who attend the Charter School for Applied Technologies, which is on the Town of Tonawanda side of Kenmore Avenue, just across the street from Buffalo. They are transported on school buses.
• About 500 high school students who live in Buffalo and are provided Metro Bus and Rail passes to attend parochial and private schools outside the city.
• A handful of students from Buffalo who are enrolled at the Kadimah School in Amherst and who are provided school bus service.
Those agreements were approved over the years by the Board of Education and cost the district about $1.1 million in local funds, or about 10 percent of the total bill. The state picks up the rest.
But as a result of a ruling from the state Education Department, the district must either end its agreements with Applied Technologies and Kadimah or — upon request — provide the same service to as many as 50 other nonpublic schools outside Buffalo, said John P. Fahey, assistant superintendent for transportation.
“If you do it for one, you have to do it for all,” Fahey told the board’s executive affairs committee. “We’d become the Erie County Transportation Authority.”
Busing would continue at its current level for students who live in Buffalo and attend nonpublic schools within the city, Fahey said.
Christopher Jacobs, an at-large board member, said he will not support the proposed cuts because they could be a factor in prompting families to move out of the city.
Board members Ralph Hernandez and Lou Petrucci also voiced reservations.
“The bottom line is that they’re residents of the city and they should be entitled to transportation,” Hernandez said.
Board President Mary Ruth Kapsiak supported the proposal, saying the district should use the savings to improve classroom programs for students attending the city’s public schools.
The board directed school administrators to come back with a more detailed cost analysis.
