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PEEKSKILL, N.Y. -- The city school district can see substantial savings by making changes to its routing and bus bidding policies.
That was the result of a study performed by Transportation Advisory Services for the district last year. Consultant Lou Boffardi presented the findings to the Peekskill school board Tuesday night.
The district has 39 vehicles contracted through Mile Square Transportation, with eight providing home to school transportation, four vans for in district workers and 27 vehicles, which are mostly vans, transporting students to 49 other districts as ordered by state law. Boffardi said the transportation department had done a good job scheduling tight bus schedules.
"They have done everything possible to utilize the vehicles efficiently," Boffardi said.
However the district should be working to get more current estimates on how many students are using the buses at different times of the year, since many buses are running far below capacity due to seasonal changes or students getting bused to child care
"The school district has been very liberal in allowing frequent changes in bus stops based on requests by parents," Boffardi said. "As a result of these frequent changes the number of students assigned to buses changes dramatically and what is projected as the number of students on a bus in the summer can be vastly different in October, so you have buses that are substantially over-loaded and under-loaded."
Boffardi recommended taking new ridership counts three times a year to make sure that only the necessary number of buses are being run at any given time of year.
Frequent changes in child care locations was also cited by Boffardi as a factor leading to underutilized buses. He said he understood the need to get young children to a proper guardian, but he said having parents send their children to different locations on a frequent basis, sometimes several per week, changes the number of students on a route. Also, having a child care location in an eligible spot in the city allows normally ineligible students to ride buses.
"It impacts substantially the number of vehicles that you need," he said.
Boffardi said, under state law, all changes to a student's child care route must be submitted by parents by April 1 and he urged the district to enforce that deadline.
Another issue affecting cooperative transportation programs with the Lakeland and Hendrick Hudson School Districts, known as "piggybacking." Boffardi said students from those districts are able to use Peekskill buses since they are contracted through an outside transportation company and not owned by the district, but Peekskill students cannot use the other district's buses since they are district owned.
Joe Urbanowicz , school board president, said the board should write a letter to its elected representatives urging them to make such policies illegal.
The district should also change its outdated bid specifications, Boffardi said, since it currently bids in whole hour increments when most districts bid in half hour increments that are rounded off to the nearest hour.
"If your bid [policy] was restructured, some of your costs would drop substantially," Boffardi said.
School board trustees agreed that policy should be changed as soon as possible.
"It's in everybody's best interest to have that changed," Urbanowicz said. "It's only fair."
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