School districts get rolling on ways to cut transportation costs

With fuel costs up 50 percent over last year, school districts across New Jersey are looking for creative ways to save money when they begin transporting students back to school this year.

"There's been a lot of activity on this subject, from reducing idling time to more drastic cuts, like eliminating transportation," said Robin Leeds, an industry specialist with the National School Transportation Association, a Virginia-based organization that represents the interests of school transportation contractors.

In South Brunswick, school officials are installing fuel monitoring systems in buses to track vehicles.

"It's for accountability and to see if there are any problems with the vehicles," said Anthony Tonzini, business administrator for the Middlesex County school district, which has 60 buses and 18 maintenance vehicles.

Officials also have consolidated field trips, compared in-house versus contracted costs, and are working with other school districts to provide transportation, he said.

"We're eliminating any unnecessary trips. We always look at how to tier the buses, and use the buses over and over again," Tonzini said.

Years before the current gas crisis, Livingston school officials in Essex County began purchasing fuel from the township, which offers price breaks to tax-exempt organizations, said schools business administrator Steve Robinson. Because of this, schools paid $3 a gallon for gas last month when prices at local pumps were at $3.75, he said.

Robinson said the district is reviewing other cost-cutting measures, but would not consider a four-day school week.

More than 100 districts in 16 states have moved to a four-day school week as a cost-saving measure, according to Marc Egan, director of federal affairs for the National School Boards Association. None of those districts are in New Jersey, he said.

In Montgomery Township in Somerset County, school officials recently reviewed their transportation system and "composed a complete revision," said Tom Venanzi, business administrator.

"We are adjusting the starting and ending times, and found a more efficient way to deliver the kids to and from school. We're doing it with fewer vehicles and are able to save $500,000 a year," he said.

The district also cut the warm-up idling time for buses from 15 to five minutes and the cool-down time from three to one minute.

Venanzi said the district also looked at the number of students on each vehicle. If there were 30 to 35 students on a bus, changes were made to get that number closer to capacity, he said. The district also reduced the number of buses needed at the high school level because more students drive or ride with friends.

But Leeds, of the NSTA, warned against school districts relying on student drivers to cut gas costs. She cited a 10-year study conducted by the Transportation Research Board that found half of the 50 million children enrolled in school are bus riders.

An average of 20 students a year are killed going to or coming from school via a bus, according to the study, while an average of 800 children who don't ride the bus are killed going to or coming home from school. Fifty-five percent of the 800 killed annually are teen drivers, she said.

"When you take bus transportation away from kids, you increase the chance that they won't get to school alive," she said. "It forces high school kids to drive or ride with a friend."

Leeds suggested schools cut costs by increasing driver training on how to conserve fuel, increase bus maintenance, check tire pressure, and when it can be done safely, consolidate bus stops.

"These can be done without additional costs," she said.

Eliminating "dead heading" or empty buses being driven around town is another way to reduce costs, she said.

"Rather than returning the bus to the bus yard, have the driver park at the school" once he drops off the children, she said.

Leeds also suggested districts can reduce activity transportation. If middle and high school teams are going to the same area, transport them all on the same bus. She also said some districts are passing the transportation costs to parents.

Districts in Massachusetts and California are charging $750 per child a year, she said. And other districts have increased the distance families must live from school to receive busing, from one to two miles for elementary- and middle-school students, and from two to three miles at the high-school level.

Leeds said the NSTA is against this because most parents won't allow their children to walk two and three miles to school, so they take them, which increases traffic, fuel consumption and pollution.

"We in the industry understand trying to balance school budgets with everything else, but students must be transported safely," she said.