Post news and information from your neighborhood: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________ The district has been working with families and Metro Transit for years on options. Unfortunately, there are some very serious barriers, including the following:
1) information from a number of meetings surveys of HS families over the last few years has indicated that many parents do not want their children using public transportation, for various reasons 2) current bus routes either do not run close enough to many of our families to be a viable alternative at all, or if they are close, many students would have to make multiple transfers and extend their transportation time well beyond what's reasonable 3) current bus schedules/capacities do not meet the needs of our learners and schools no matter how you move around either school or student schedules 4) under the current MTC cost structure, SPPS analyses have shown that the cost per student would be higher with MTC than under the current yellow-bus arrangment 5) To meet the needs of SPPS secondary students, Metro Transit would need a huge number of additional buses, running on different routes and on different schedules to allow secondary students to get where they need to be in a remotely reasonable amount of time. They have made it crystal clear that they don't have the money to do this, nor are they particularly interested in having thousands of HS students riding their buses 2X/day, for various reasons. 6) Finally, our transportation system routinely wins national awards for its cost-effectiveness and efficiencies. Key to that is our use of multi-tiered schedules (here's the short version): the first bus route run costs about $250 and subsequent runs of the same bus in the same time period are about $50 each. EACH bus picks up secondary students first and drops them at school (7:30 start times), then picks up early-start elementary students and drops them off (c. 8-8:30 start times), then picks up late-start elementary students and drops them off (9ish start times). Same in the afternoons. This provides time for after-school activities for secondary students and keeps most elementary students from having large blocks of time at home unsupervised when parents are working. Yes, there are a thousand other nuances, considerations, and ideas that many of you have, and we are always open better ideas as long as they further learning opportunities and achievement for all our 43,000 K-12 learners and tens of thousands of adult learners. I welcome them all on this or any other topic, and would encourage you to contact me or other school board members directly for this to be most productive. Even better, in order to be more powerful "players" in these decisions, community and family members are always welcome at site-based decision making council meetings (see www.spps.org for more information on how to get involved). The Board also makes appointments each fall to the Citizens Budget and Finance Advisory Committee, which this year is taking a hard look at long-term issues around meeting the needs of English language learners in St. Paul schools. And finally, to weigh in on specific budget concerns, please attend the Feb 19 forum at the Rondo complex at Dale and Concordia this Thursday, 2/20, 7-9 pm (I'll be there, but late because I teach that evening). Thanks! -- Anne Carroll, St. Paul School Board ___________________________________________ Anne R. Carroll Carroll, Franck & Associates Strategic planning, public involvement, communications 1357 Highland Parkway St. Paul, MN 55116 USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] 651-690-9162 School Board: 651-690-9156 or www.annecarroll.org "A politician worries about the next election. A states[wo]man worries about the next generation, and the children yet unborn." e.e. cummings "...leadership is about how you bring out the best in people. Leadership is what you give to the community you live in. Leadership is what you give to the world. Leadership is how you live an honest life... You will be more credible and you will be more powerful if you do not separate the lives you live from the words you speak." -- Paul Wellstone _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ _____________________________________________ For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract
