Rocky View Schools (RVS) Superintendent Greg Luterbach says with these days of finite dollars available for school divisions in the province that every dollar spent on transportation is a dollar that's not spent in the classroom.  

That's why the Board of Trustees has allocated $50,000 from their general reserves to conduct a bus route efficiency review that's aimed at identifying and creating efficiencies to optimize school bus service in RVS.

Luterbach says that even though the division wants to pour the majority of its resources into classrooms, they realize that transportation is an important part of a well functioning district.  "So we're trying to make sure we're providing as efficient service as we can with the service standard that the board is going to support."

Luterbach says the money RVS is receiving for transportation does not match the service they're providing.  "We continue to provide a service above and beyond what we're funded for," explains Luterbach.  "That's been important to our communities and important to the board ut we've been running some significant deficits and we've kind of emptied the piggy-bank."

Luterbach says for the past two years they've made significant changes to the service and gives credit to transportation staff for their efforts. "But what we want to do is to spend some money to bring in a consultant to kind of look at it with a different set of eyes and say, 'OK, we know that you're running a deficit in transportation, there might be options that you've never considered' when we bring a fresh set of eyes to the issue." 

According to Luterbach, the consultant will likely look at RVS' existing bus routes and try to come up with ways they could be more effectively utilized. He anticipates the consultant will come back with a set of recommendations and suggestions but says they may or may not all be accepted.

"We may go, 'thanks, but that's not a level of service we're willing to entertain' because we're not interested in having kids ride longer on the bus.  What we will know then is that we've had somebody else have a look at it and we've kind of turned over all the rocks that we can to make sure we're not missing anything."  

 

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