School Board Turns Down Appeal to Expand Busing in Scarsdale

A proposal from community members to increase eligibility for busing to more or all students was defeated unanimously by the Board of Education, late into their meeting on the night of December 14th.

Currently, Scarsdale's policy is to provide busing for students who reside 1.5 miles or more from their school. This poses difficulties for children who cannot walk that distance or need to cross busy roads, often without crosswalks or sidewalks. Some parents who are unable to drive their children back and forth pay for private buses.

Speaking for the administration, Dr. Hagerman and Mr. Mattey explained the current policy and the costs and procedures that would be required to change it. The district's current policy of providing busing to those who live 1.5 miles or more from their school is more generous than the state policy which requires busing for students more than 2 miles from their school. The district receives 6.5% in reimbursement from the state for the transportation.

The transportation budget for the 2015-16 school year is $4.1 million, which includes the purchase of buses.

Stuart Mattey reviewed the additional costs that would be incurred to provide busing to more students.

If the distance was reduced to 1.2 miles, 400 more students would be served at a cost of $563,000

If the distance was reduced to 1 mile, 900 more students would be served at a cost of $1.1 million.

Mattey noted that increased bus ridership could impact traffic and the environment and necessitate increased bus storage.

A change to the busing policy would require a voter referendum. If the transportation costs caused the overall budget to increase by more than the tax cap, which is anticipated to be at near 0% this year, the district would require a supermajority or 60% vote to pass the budget.

Dr. Hagerman delivered the district reccomendation which was to maintain the current busing policy. He noted that there had been some confusion about changes to the busing policy for special education, private and parochial school students and said that no changes to that policy had been proposed. The board received 54 emails about busing during the prior week, some of which may have been due to the confusion.

In a meeting that ended near midnight, each board member aired their view on a change to the busing policy. All concurred with the administration's recommendation to leave the current policy in place.

While sympathetic to community concerns, Board members expressed the need to use tax dollars for curriculum and programs that would benefit all district students rather than a subset of students who could use the transporation

Here are a few of their comments:

Suzanne Seiden said, "This issue comes up every year. ...We weigh all the factors .....
I do not favor making any change in our transportation policy. The cost is so high that it would negatively impact our curriculum. We would have to make significant program cuts or raise taxes to pay for it."

Bill Natbony said that as a board member he must "Exercise my fiduciary responsibility by considering the entire community.... The current policy is more generous than required by state law and it has been in place for some time .... There will be pressure on the overall budget for next year. Many of the additional expenditures will benefit all students. .... I do hope we can work with the village to have more sidewalks, crosswalks, and stop lights.

Chris Morin said, "I would love to see improvements but championing the most expensive and least efficient proposal does not make sense so I oppose it."

Scott Silberfein concurred, saying "We should explore efficiencies and safety issues but I support the administration's recommendations.

Pam Fuehrer said, "I don't want to compromise our transition plan goals. We need to stay focused on our plan.

Art Rublin confessed that he walked a distance to school as his parents worked. He said, "There's no surprise when you move here about where there is bus service.... Crossing guards might be helpful at more intersections....Heavy backpacks can be an issue and maybe teachers should consider this. At some point it may make sense to look at efficiencies, but I support the administration's recommendation on this.

Board President Lee Maude agreed. She said, "I don't believe we should change our policy this year. We set our plans and I think we should stick with that. However, your emails screamed out to me ....I am a parent of a child who takes a private bus. I wish I knew when I bought the house that I was 1.4 miles from the middle school. As a working parent I had to have a babysitter who drove and I had to put my children in after school clubs. I understand your frustrations, but it's the life we live so that our funds can go into the curriculum."

During the public comments session, Alissa Kanowitz said, "We live on Seneca Road, 1.2 miles from the school. When I bought the house, I did not realize that I would have to drive my kids to school. I left work because of this. It's unwalkable and we don't have enough children in our neighborhood for private bus service. It is not safe for our kids to walk to school. Our neighborhood does not have sidewalks or crossing guards. It's an unfair burden for families who have children a mile or more away from the schools."

Commenting on the decision in an email after the meeting, Melissa Mantzouris and Mauri Zemachson who originally brought the issue before the board, said the following:

"We are very disappointed with the board's decision to not move forward in making any changes to the 8410 policy around busing. We knew that from the beginning, this was not going to be an easy battle. We made sure to research our facts and provide as much rationale as we could to get the board to make a change. We asked for 100% busing because we felt everyone should have access to the same benefits of this town. We still feel the board should perform an efficiency study to assess how current funds are being used and if they are operating as efficiently as they can be. We have tremendous respect for Mr. Hagerman, Stuart Mattey and all the members of the board. We have learned a lot about the board of education and it's process. Busing is an issue that continues to come to the board every year and the reasons for not making any changes seem to always be due financial constrictions. It's a tough battle but the end goal in mind was to fight for the safety of our children in Scarsdale. We will continue to work towards our goals and we will look at ways the village can improve roads and traffic hazards near schools. We appreciate all the parent support and media attention we received."
Thank you Melissa Mantzouris and Mauri Zemachson

Bob Berg, a champion of fiscal responsibility for the district sent the following on busing:

"The dichotomy between the Mandarin discussion and the busing issue was stark. Proponents of providing District busing to all District students are really all about the money. For the most part, they are users of the "private" bus system who live closer to the schools than the 1.5 mile mark beyond which the District provides "free" District busing to the schools. These residents pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars per year to have their kids bused to the District schools, and feel that they pay a lot in property taxes and "deserve" "free" busing. Though some profess safety concerns preclude their kids from walking or biking to school, the driving force seems to be to externalize the costs of the private bus service by having all Scarsdale taxpayers pay for this service. Unlike the Mandarin issue, the busing proponents don't engender a sympathetic response. The costs of expanded busing are enormous, ranging from $560,000 (reducing the mileage restriction from 1.5 miles to 1.25 miles) to nearly $5 million if all District students are provided District busing. Moreover, the operational costs of the busing program are not excluded from the tax cap. Expanded busing would easily bust the tax cap this year, thereby requiring a 60% vote in favor of a budget. I daresay that a proposed budget that exceeds the tax cap in order to pay for expanded busing would not capture a supermajority of the votes. Further, in a time of serious budget constraints, expanding busing would have to come at the cost of program cuts, staff reductions, or both. I want my tax dollars spent on items that preserve and enhance our in-school programs and staff, not to subsidize the users of the private bus system.

Finally, for those proponents of expanded busing, I note that no one is required to take the private bus. This is a voluntary expense undertaken by parents who, for whatever reasons, don't want their kids to walk or bike to school. Scarsdale already has a generous District busing policy – State law mandates that a District must provide busing to K-8 students who live 2 miles or more from the schools and high school students who live 3 miles or more. Scarsdale, however, provides District busing for students who live 1.5 miles or more. No one who buys or rents a house in Scarsdale should be surprised to find out that her kids are not entitled to District busing when they reach school age. The District's busing policy has been in place for nearly 20 years, and the District maintains a list of which properties are eligible for District busing. Thus, I was pleased that the Administration and the Board declined to go forward with a public referendum on reducing the District's mileage limits for busing.

On Wednesday morning, following the Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Hagerman shared the following letter he sent to Melissa Mantzouris and Mauri Zemachson:

Dear Melissa and Mauri,
On behalf of the District, we thank you for your interest, passion, and work around busing. As I hope was made clear through multiple discussions, we understand the points you raise about student safety and appreciate your diligence on this topic. If there is any way we can support your efforts with the village or county in terms of additional sidewalks or the like, we are happy to do so.

In terms of managing expectations, while there are likely always some efficiencies to be found, and we are willing to engage in this work, bus transportation is never an exact science, and, unfortunately is dependent on the individual daily decisions of students and families, along with other uncontrollable variables, such as weather. We all wish we had the ability to customize our bus service on a daily basis to account for these changes, but, of course, this is impossible. From a consumer standpoint, it can look like a relatively full bus on a cold, rainy or snowy day, then half full bus on a warm, sunny spring day. Unfortunately, again, we cannot manage this at a daily level, so we have to provide the same level of service, understanding that there will be fluctuations--perhaps even very large ones--from day to day.

This, of course, does not preclude us from taking a more macro level approach and looking at our routes across the District. So you know, this is actually done annually, based on the number of bus riders. Routes are re-calculated each school year to account for changes in ridership, and they are occasionally revised during the year, based on changes in enrollment. It was mentioned in the meeting that we have an older mapping system (software program), and we do. This does not mean, however, that we use outdated maps or routes for busing.

Finally, even in the event we are able to save some dollars through efficiency, you still understand that we can not unilaterally change the busing limits. As indicated during Monday night's meeting, this would require a voter referendum. With 50% of our families with no students in the District, and 39% of our current families receiving busing, this leaves a very small number of citizens to convince a very large number to make this change--with a very expensive price tag. I don't say this to try to be discouraging, I just want to be clear about how tall the mountain is should we ever try to climb it.

Thank you again for your time and energy on this, and we are hopeful more can be done to ensure the safe passage from home to school and back again.

Thomas