Division puts
bus routes back

By Bruce Campbell
Staff Reporter

Jessica Hood’s life has returned to some normalcy after a year of having to drive her children from her Gladys Ridge home to attend Okotoks schools.
Her children are now being picked up at home after the Foothills School Division voted on Sept. 19 to reinstate busing for approximately 110 school-of-choice students.
“It started for us on Monday and right now there is no difference in my children’s schedule than there was two years ago (when the division eliminated pick-up and drop-off of school of choice students) — it’s even the same bus driver,” Hood said.
Hood, who has a child in three different Okotoks schools, said she had to switch from full-time work to part-time last year in order to get her children to school.
Hood stressed that when she inquired about where her children could go to school in 2004, she was told her children were eligible to go to Okotoks.
“I didn’t hear anything about school of choice,” she said.
Foothills School Division began providing “school of choice busing” again for approximately 80 students last week who were affected by school trustees’ June 2006 decision to eliminate busing for students electing to attend schools outside their geographic boundary.
Trustees voted at their Sept. 19 meeting to reinstate busing for the estimated 110 students who were affected by the June 2006 decision. The students must still live in their same residence and be attending the same school when the 2006 decision was made.
The Sept. 19 decision was done approximately one month after Court of Queen’s Bench Judge Dennis Hart ruled the board did not provide proper public consultation in its decision in June of 2006 to eliminate the busing.
Drew Chipman, division secretary-treasurer, said in an interview Monday that eventually 110 students will now receive school of choice busing for the 2007/08 school year.
He said the division will be altering approximately 17 bus routes to accommodate the new proposal with transportation times increasing from five to 35 minutes one-way for some students depending on the route.
Two new buses will likely be added as a result of Hart’s quashing of the June 2006 decision. The division is also presently looking to hire more drivers.
The extra cost has been estimated at $148,000 for this school year.
The division is facing a financial crunch this year in transportation because High River has gone over the 10, 000 population mark — meaning the community has lost its rural designation, costing the division approximately $165,000 in transportation revenue from the province.
Division chairman Jerry Muelaner said trustees and administration chose not to appeal Hart’s decision.
“We felt we had to bring some closure to this whole issue,” Muelaner said in an interview after the Sept.19 meeting. “We thought coming out of the next election (Oct. 15), if the board wants to go into public consultation let’s do it as quickly as possible…. If we had appealed it would have left the whole issue hanging.”
He said all possibilities will be looked at during consultation, ranging from continued service to eliminating school of choice busing.
Jay Lyons, who is one of 10 parents who took the school board to court over its decision to eliminate the busing, is happy to see the busing reinstated. Now he is hoping any public consultation is open and transparent —that there aren’t any predetermined decisions.
He is also pleased to have the board acknowledge the significance of High River losing its rural designation. (Okotoks tipped over 10,000 people earlier in the decade, which cost the division approximately $220,000).
He said the students receiving the school-of-choice busing have been portrayed as causing the division’s shortfall.
“The reality is, the funding formula is broken, these guys (the division) are not getting enough funding from the province,” Lyons said. “The easy solution is, there are 4,000 students getting transportation, so let’s knock off the 280 students (who had their busing eliminated in 2006).”
He stressed that none of the parents with children receiving school-of-choice busing have ever been opposed to paying fees.
The decision of 2006 did not eliminate students going to a school outside their designated boundary. However, the division would not provide pick-up service for those students. Students had to find their own way to a bus stop within the school boundary if they chose to use the bus service.
As well, parents had to pay a transportation fee, which they are continuing to pay.