When school starts next week, families in the Puyallup School District will have to get used to a new cost-saving policy to transport only students whose home or day care is more than one mile from school – as the crow flies.
The problem, according to parent Yen-Vy Van, is that the last time she checked, she wasn’t a crow. Neither was her 7-year-old daughter, Brynn Smith.
Under the new rule, Brynn is among some 3,000 Puyallup students no longer eligible to ride a school bus because their home or day care falls inside the one-mile radius.
Van said she and other working parents in the Mountain Park housing development on South Hill just learned of the changes two weeks ago.
Now they’re desperately trying to make adjustments.
“We’re trying to pull together funding to find a stay-at-home mom who can pick up our kids,” Van said. “There is one stay-at-home mom who might be able to do it. But in her block, there’s already 10 people asking her.”
The transportation cutback is among dozens of cost-saving measures that Pierce County’s second-largest school district made to close a $13.5 million budget shortfall. Puyallup is eliminating more than 900 bus stops, significantly altering bus routes for 16 of the district’s 33 schools. But it’s saving $1.3 million.
“That’s a lot of money, and it’s money that we would have had to take out of other programs,” Puyallup deputy superintendent Debra Aungst said in a news release.
The district still provides transportation to some students within the one-mile radius: certain special education students, children lacking safe walking routes and half-day kindergartners in certain cases.
So far, 45 to 50 people have filed appeals, district spokeswoman Karen Hansen said.
“It was a very difficult cut. But like many other districts, they’re not transporting within one mile,” Hansen said. “We encourage parents to practice their routes to school with their children before the first day of school.”
The problem facing Puyallup, and other districts around the state, is the state’s underfunding of transportation.
The state partially reimburses districts to bus students who live more than a mile from school. But that minimum is a straight line from the school to the house, regardless of the actual route distance to reach school.
Though the state gives districts a small amount of funding based on the number of elementary students living within one mile of school, districts must shoulder even more of the cost to bus students within the one-mile radius.
The driving distance between Brouillet Elementary and Brynn’s day care is 1.4 miles, Van said. But the district calculates the day care is within the one-mile radius.
The family has filed an appeal, asking the district to reinstate at least one bus stop in the Mountain Park neighborhood, near 160th St. E. and 95th Ave. E.
Van and her husband, who both work outside Pierce County, had planned to follow last year’s routine for getting Brynn and her 12-year-old sister Megan to school: Drop them off at day care a couple hours early. The sisters catch the bus from there to Brouillet and Stahl Junior high. After school, they’d take the bus to day care, then go home with their parents in the early evening.
When they learned of the transportation change, the family gave notice the girls could no longer attend the day care that had cared for them since infancy.
“I don’t think it is safe for a 7-year-old to be at home by herself, and to get herself to school and walk to school herself,” the mother said. “Why couldn’t they have had more consideration for parents and given us more notice?”
Hansen said the district began giving public notice of the impending changes in budget proposals in March, and at hearings later in the spring. Only two people commented against it, she said.
The district sent letters to affected parents Aug. 12 and additional reminders in two automated phone calls the past two weeks.
Officials say they couldn’t notify individual families earlier because they had to finish manually calculating which students lived within the affected area.
“They’re literally using grease pens to mark bus routes,” Hansen said. “We sent letters out as early as we could. I’m sorry people have to scramble. It’s the best we can do.”
Under a new funding system slated to be implemented by 2013, districts could receive state funding for students within one mile. “Districts will determine a walk area and receive funding for all students outside the walk area,” wrote Allan Jones, state pupil transportation director, in an e-mail. “ They will have to document that there is not a safe route to school with a distance less than one road mile.
“So, the funding system will then not be based on ‘as the crow flies.’ ”
Debby Abe: 253-597-8694
MORE ON THE WEB
• Puyallup School District parents can learn more about the district’s bus route changes, see safe walking routes to schools, and how to appeal the elimination of a bus stop at the district Web site: puyallup.k12.wa.us.
• Wondering why the state has that “as the crow flies” rule for school bus funding? Find out the answer at our Word on the Street blog: blogs.thenewstribune.com/street
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