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Rich
Top Member
United States
5768 Posts |
 Posted - 08/29/2003 : 8:33:12 PM
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After attending the Board Meeting on Wednesday, some details have come in about why the cuts took place and also what remedies the district is considering.
Here are some key points:
- Bus passes will be provided for two months at no cost to students
- After two months, the district is considering subsidized pass costs
- School buses will not be used this school year, public buses are the only options
- The County transportation department, who runs the public bus system, will not lower the price of the bus passes, thus the cause of the original cuts
I got on numerous TV stations and newspapers as a result of my speech at the board meeting. Despite this two-month plan, it does not promise any coverage for the rest of the eight months. This two-month plan discouraged many parents from speaking--- they simply pulled their speaking cards from the secretary.
This district continues to put the students in the rear, and is very sly with these plans being brought out of the cracks minutes before the public speaking begins.
Here is an article from The Journal News. The text related to me is in bold font.
YONKERS — The city's high school students won a two-month reprieve last night from the Board of Education's decision to eliminate free transportation in September.
The announcement, which came just before the school board meeting, defused the anger of many parents and students who had arrived to complain about the cutbacks for 5,000 teenagers.
Interim Superintendent of Schools Angelo Petrone warned that the district lacked the resources to continue the passes beyond October unless the state Legislature came through with more funding. The district is opening the school year operating on a spending plan that would cost $365 million. But the schools have been allocated just $345 million from the Yonkers City Council.
"This is a temporary measure," Petrone said.
Initially, Board of Education President Richard Narog told The Journal News at last night's meeting that the school board had struck an agreement with the administration of Mayor John Spencer to finance the bus passes.
But Spencer, reached by telephone last night, said he had made no agreement to come up with $500,000 to bus the high school students, though he pledged to work with the school board to find the money, part of the district's $20 million shortfall. He said many parents and students appeared to need more time to make the transition to a district that demanded more personal responsibility, which could include paying for their own bus passes.
"I met with some board members today, and our issue is the healthy and smooth opening of the school system," Spencer said.
Narog said later that he had misunderstood how the passes would be financed. He said the school district would pick up the tab.
With the state reimbursing the district for 60 percent of its transportation costs, Narog said two months of passes would cost the district just $200,000. He said that was equal to the annual pay of two administrators.
"If not for reimbursement, we couldn't go this far," Narog said. "It's two positions at the highest level. We are really skinning it here."
The school year begins Sept. 8. On the following day, candidates in the Republican, Conservative and Democratic parties will face off in primaries for Yonkers mayor. The two-month passes will expire at the end of October, a week before Election Day in November.
Yonkers parents and students last night appealed to the Board of Education to make the two-month reprieve into a full-year program.
Student Richard Solano, 15, who will attend 10th grade this year, told the board that traveling by bus was the safest way to transport teens to school. He warned the board that eliminating bus passes would increase absenteeism.
"Attendance will drop to an all-time low," he said.
Parent Eva Sanchez said that eliminating bus passes made it especially difficult for parents scraping by to make ends meet. Without the passes, parents would have to pay $75 a month for county bus passes.
"You don't know how hard we work," she said. "We're going to have to work overtime and on weekends to get our children to school."
In the past, Yonkers has provided free bus passes to 5,000 high school students, which includes 250 who attend private schools. But Petrone did not include high school busing in the $350.6 million budget plan he presented to the panel earlier this summer. It would cost the district $2.5 million to purchase passes for the entire year, with $1.5 million reimbursed by the state.
The cost is based on Westchester County's offer to sell the monthly, all-day passes for $50 to the district, a considerable discount from the retail rate of $75 a month. It is still higher than the $35-a-month passes the county sold to Yonkers last year, which were good on weekdays but not on weekends.
Petrone's budget plan, which was returned to him in July without a vote, represented a 3 percent reduction in Yonkers school spending from the 2002-03 school year. If no more funding is secured, it would be the only district in the region to operate this year with less money than it had a year ago.
This cut stands in stark contrast to spending increases throughout Westchester and Putnam counties, where budgets went up an average of 7.7 percent. The lowest increase in Westchester was 3.1 percent in Peekskill.
Earlier this week, the office of state Comptroller Alan Hevesi warned the district that state law prohibited it from incurring expenses in a budget that lacked funding for an entire year.
Narog said that the board was aware of its responsibility to adopt a spending plan within available appropriations and warned that cutbacks in the district's instruction programs would be made if more funding were not found.
He said the board has set a deadline of Sept. 8 — the first day of school — for a response for the state legislative delegation as to whether the district will receive more state aid this year.
"The definitive response, which we anticipate to be 'yes,' should also include a timetable for the receipt of these funds," he said.
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Edited by - Rich on 08/29/2003 8:34:17 PM
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Updated on High School Busing
