FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL

Let us talk about the busing challenges that our District faces this year. Busing children is among the essential services most school districts provide their students. Working parents rely on bus transportation by the school district to manage their schedules and have the peace of mind during pick-ups and drop-offs that their children are being transported safely. Children make new friends on their bus routes and find the confidence to be independent.

Our District has had its fair share of bus snafus over the past few years, and the pandemic contributed to challenges with driver shortages.

The bus schedule to the UCVTS schools was modified quite drastically in early 2021 to balance the busing availability for all students in the District.

At the beginning of the school year, parents were given the option to apply for subscription busing at the cost of $1000 for the year. And yet last week, we heard that the District canceled a GL and Columbia route due to the unavailability of substitute drivers. 

The Superintendent’s update was unclear as to what happened to the primary bus driver that should have been driving the route. The email left out the most critical piece of information – what can parents expect on Monday morning? It is Sunday afternoon, and we have not heard of a contingency plan for that bus route. I can only guess that those parents impacted by this unexpected change are making contingency plans of their own.

Let us take a step back and consider the changes that have happened over the past year with the redistricting and reconfiguration. I can almost hear the groans of some parents and residents as I write this – here we go again, one of the small group of “angry parents” bringing up the redistricting and reconfiguration over and over again. But hear me out for a minute.

My family was not impacted directly by the process, but I can see the impact on other families and friends in town.

The redistricting and reconfiguration process upended the concept of neighborhood schools. Children who ordinarily walked to school were forced to be bused or driven.

Those in the 3-5 graders age group felt the most impact of this move because they were just the right age group to walk independently, building confidence and independence.

In the past, these children would be walking to Woodruff school with their friends along familiar streets in the neighborhood. Second graders from the Hughes and Mountain Park areas need to be bused or driven to their new K-2 school. Children who walk to school develop confidence, personal skills, independence, and healthy walking habits. Multiple studies provide evidence of the importance of walking to school. (see below). Berkeley Heights Township has been working hard to improve the Safe Routes to School program, receiving grants from the County and State over the years.

Those parents who could not flex their schedules to drive their children had to rely on courtesy and subscription busing to get their children to school safely. This has likely increased the demand for bus services in the District.  It has also put more financial burden on parents to spend money on subscription busing only to find out late in the summer that some of them (MKM, Mountain Park) did not even have subscription busing available anymore.

Having four neighborhood K-5 schools might have alleviated some of these transportation problems in the face of labor shortages. The Berkeley Heights BOE missed a real opportunity to think of long-term solutions in their quest to implement full-day kindergarten in haste last year.

There was no contingency plan when such arrangements fell through, as evidenced by the bus route cancellation announcement from last week.

Parents need our District and BOE leadership to step up, think ahead, and plan for even the essential services. We need the BOE leadership to work with parents and the community to take the best ideas to keep our District moving forward.

Meanwhile, let us plan for Monday morning, and have a great rest of the week.

Why walking to school is better than driving for your kids

Healthy Benefits of Walking and Biking to School

The Advantages of Walking to School

-Dipti Khanna

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