I went last night to the HISD meeting at Westbury High School, which discussed possible savings from reconfiguring transportation for magnet students (I'm pretty sure this includes Vanguard students as well). I found it interesting for a number of reasons.
The beginning of the presentation was information about the current situation. HISD spends (according to their calculations) a net of $16.2M on transportation for students in the various magnet programs. When they look at how that breaks out, $8.9M is spent on transporting students 10+ miles to their destination, often on buses which are only partially full and which make a lot of stops on a long route. In the Q/A session, it was discovered that the transportation expenses were essentially flat for the past 8 years; that's impressive, actually, when you consider the various increases in salaries and the cost of living (including fuel). The last interesting statistic (if I understood it correctly) was that over 70% (it was either 72% or 78%) of that transportation budget was for salaries and benefits, not fuel or maintenance - so rising/falling fuel prices are not a huge effect, and more efficient buses would be a big capital expenditure for a small cost savings.
With that in mind, the officials at the meeting made four proposals to realize savings in the system:
- Eliminate bus routes of 10 miles and over. Students outside the 10 mile radius from their destination school would have to travel inside that radius to a pick up point at an HISD school. They would be assigned to schools on a space-available basis.
- Students outside the 10 mile radius would have to come into a 'drop off' spot inside the 10 mile radius where a bus would pick them up. This may be one spot for a common set of students. It may or may not be a school.
- ALL magnet students would be assigned to a pickup and drop-off spot, which may not be their local school. This would allow HISD to coalesce students to pick-up locations based on their destination, not their home address.
- ALL magnet students would be picked up from their local high school.
Now, you'd think that the last option would save the most money; instead of having buses originating from elementary schools (a lot of them) and terminating at magnet schools all around town (elementary, middle, and high schools), you'd instead have collection points at high schools (only a few places) and drop-offs as before. Fewer collections points should mean fewer routes, but maybe the number of kids at each collection point would be large enough to require a large number of buses on each route anyway.
In any case, each option would have a different amount of savings realized. The first option would save the most - the whole $8.9m. The last option would save the least - $6.1M, with the other two falling in between. To me, the last two options would be maximally disruptive, as it changes the transportation habits of all magnet students; the first two options would only affect students traveling 10+ miles to their school. According to HISD, of about 200,000 students, about 40,000 are magnet students, and about 12,000 are being transported via bus. Nearly 3,400 students travel 10+ miles from pickup to drop-off.
Many parents at the meeting seemed to have the impression that these transportation changes were only the first step in a grander plan to eliminate magnet programs altogether. They based this, I think, on some comments by HISD Superintendent Dr. Saavedra; I've not heard the comments (can someone provide links if they can find them?), but I've heard that impression from a disparate set of parents in various venues. The officials at the meeting kept responding that it was the Board of Trustees who made the final decision; If I read between the lines, I'm guessing that this was to perhaps reassure the parents that Dr. Saavedra was not making the decision, no matter what his public comments. I spoke with one of the officials afterwards, who said the board was in fact very proud and supportive of the magnet program; I came away with the impression that the board's goal was to preserve and strengthen the magnet program, not to impair it, certainly not by making it difficult for students who are zoned to under-performing schools and who attend schools farther away.
Another issue which will need to be considered is that there are a significant (how many?) number of parents for whom it would be difficult to drive their students back and forth from a bus stop distant from their house. I'm guessing that their children right now walk to their local elementary school to be picked up, and walk home from there when they're dropped off. I do think that some provision should be made to assist those parents and students; it may be that Metro can help out with subsidized bus passes or some other support. That seems less appealing for elementary and middle school students.
Of course most (all?) of the parents at the meeting had children attending magnet schools; many were from the neighborhood. I was impressed by principal Coleman of Westbury, who was calm while he listened to a number of parents angrily describe his school as unacceptable (some said attending his school would harm their children). I would hope that some of the savings from these changes would go to strengthening local/home schools.
The officials at the meeting made the point that the transportation savings could be used to make the existing magnet schools more uniformly excellent; it would be my hope as well that the funds could be used to create even more magnet programs in under-served geographic areas. It would be my hope that enough academically excellent magnet programs can be established so that no child needs to travel more than 10 miles from their home school to receive an excellent or specialized education. In fact, I think I'd only be comfortable supporting these transportation disruptions and savings if the amount saved were pledged back to the magnet program to strengthen struggling magnet schools and to establish new programs. I don't know offhand how that might be codified.
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