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School District Adjusts Policies to Curb Cost of Transportation The Chillicothe R-2 District has implemented some new transportation procedures which, administrators say, will affect everything from how many field trips school organizations or groups can make to just how many times school buses are washed in local car washes. The new procedures have been established in an effort to help curb the skyrocketing costs of transportation. "These (new procedures) will affect everybody,” Schroder said. The new procedures are needed, Schroeder said, because transportation makes up 4 percent of the district’s $22 million annual budget. And while unleaded gasoline prices have gone down dramatically recently, Schroeder said that the price of diesel fuel (used by school buses) has not. “We’re trying to condense travel as much as we can,” Schroeder said. The biggest change has to do with how the district calculates the cost for field trips. In the past, Schroeder says, field trips (anything outside of the district’s normal bus routes) were calculated as costing the district $1 a mile (excluding the cost of the bus driver). Now, Schroeder says, the cost per mile to the district per field trip is calculated at $2.75 with the cost of the bus driver included. (Schroeder says the district calculates the cost of a bus driver at about 15 cents a mile.) “This will change how much each group can afford to travel within their constraints of the budget,” Schroeder said. He added, “We’ll likely have some organizations which generally like to do two or three things during the school year, but now may only be able to do one or two trips.” Putting restrictions on transportation, he said, will aid the district with its overall effort to become revenue neutral, instead of going further into the hole. “The big thing is that we’re anticipating our fuel budget is going to basically double, and so with the costs of purely fuel, we’re trying to conserve,” Schroeder said. New procedures in place state that travel requests must be submitted to the building level administration for approval at least two weeks prior to the planned trip. Groups traveling to the same location on the same date and have start times within two-and-a-half hours of each other are to travel together on the same bus. This, Schroeder says, is dependent on the number of participants involved in each group. A school bus can accommodate 44 adults and students comfortably, and students in second grade or younger can fit three students to a seat - increasing the number the bus will accommodate. Meal money for bus drivers will be paid on a reimbursement basis only. A maximum of $6 per meal will be reimbursed. Bus washing, Schroeder says, is to be done at the bus barn using the bus barn facilities. Washing the busses at the local car washes during the cold winter months must now be approved by the transportation specialist. The district will also reimburse up to, but not exceeding, $35 for physical examinations for all full-time bus drivers. The district will pay 100 percent for all full-time bus drivers for the Missouri background check. Substitute drivers must incur this expense. Any trips that have been approved at $1 per mile will not be affected by the procedures, Schroeder said. He also noted that if diesel fuel prices drop, the district may address the transportation procedures again. |
