Charter school bus service curtailed by Board of Education
School Board limits in-city schedule, drops Applied Technologies, Kadimah
The area’s largest charter school has less than three months to find a way to get more than 1,000 elementary school students to and from classes when they resume in September.
Also, several Buffalo charter schools that start classes before Labor Day are scrambling for other ways to transport students until the Buffalo Public Schools begin instruction after the holiday.
Those are the consequences of a more restrictive busing policy passed unanimously Wednesday by the Buffalo Board of Education.
The new policy has two key components:
• It ends yellow bus service for Buffalo students who attend charter, private or religious schools outside the city. That eliminates bus service for the Charter School for Applied Technologies, which is located across the street from Buffalo on the Town of Tonawanda side of Kenmore Avenue, and for Kadimah School in Amherst. Applied Technologies is the largest of 16 local charter schools.
• It continues busing for Buffalo elementary school students who attend charter schools in the city, but only on days when the city’s public schools are in session. This means that those charter schools will need other arrangements to transport students during classes in August, which are part of their longer school years.
Wednesday’s 7-0 vote was done without any public discussion of the issue, but Buffalo school officials said at earlier meetings that the changes were being made for legal, financial and logistical reasons.
As a result of a state Education Department ruling, they said, they must either end busing to Applied Technologies and Kadimah School or—upon request—provide the same service to as many as 41 other non-public schools within a 15-mile radius of Buffalo.
In addition, they said, state regulations prohibit busing for Buffalo charter schools on days that traditional city schools are not is session.
The schools that would lose busing argued that the Buffalo schools have an obligation to city children who go to charter schools and to schools outside Buffalo, and that creative ways could be found to continue the busing on a “cost neutral” basis.
Ending the busing to suburban schools, they said, could prompt people to move out of the city. Although Applied Technologies is located in the Town of Tonawanda, most of its students live in Buffalo.
The Board of Education two weeks ago tabled the new policy to give officials of charter and nonpublic schools a last opportunity to work out an agreement.
Buffalo school officials on Friday sent Applied Technologies a proposed memorandum of agreement that would have kept the busing in place for another year while negotiations continued, said Thomas R. Lucia, chief communications officer for Applied Technologies.
However, Lucia said, the proposal required Applied Technologies to waive its right to any legal action if the negotiations fell through.
“We were not willing to sign that, worried that [Buffalo school officials] could back out of the agreement any time in the next year and we’d be out of luck,” Lucia said.
The board Wednesday discussed the contractual issues in closed-door executive session but — unlike several previous meetings — did not discuss the vote in public session.
Bus passes will continue to be provided to about 500 high school students who live in Buffalo and attend parochial, private and charter schools outside the city.
Yellow bus service will also continue for nearly 900 Buffalo students who attend Catholic elementary schools in the city.
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