11,000 Pupils May Face a Longer Hike to Bus

San Diego city school officials will consider a plan to consolidate 3,000 school bus stops into less than 125, a cost-cutting and efficiency measure that one official said could put some students as far as 6.7 miles from the nearest bus stop.

The proposal, offered Tuesday by Board of Education President Larry K. Lester, would affect about 11,000 students who are now bused under two voluntary integration programs, said Dan Stephens, transportation director for the San Diego Unified School District.

The proposed “express service” would require students to get on buses at their neighborhood elementary schools rather than at the 3,000 bus stops now serviced each day by the system’s 290 buses.

The schools might be “across the street” or as much as 6.7 miles away, Stephens said. Currently, elementary school students travel no more than six blocks to a bus stop, and secondary school students travel no more than a mile.

Although Lester acknowledged that the consolidation would result in longer walks to bus stops at the schools, he said Tuesday night that he believed almost all students would be within two to three miles from a pickup point, and that the average distance would be six blocks.

The plan would cut the average bus trip from about 45 minutes to 30 to 35 minutes, he said. The service would be for students in the voluntary ethnic enrollment program and the magnet program.

It would not affect about 3,500 special education students who are bused to school each day, or about 5,000 students in a third integration program who are already bused under the express service system. In that third integration program, some students are picked up at places other than neighborhood schools because of the distance involved, Stephens said.

“This is a proposal which I think has the potential to save the district a lot of money,” Lester said. He said that many other big-city school districts, including Los Angeles, have adopted this kind of service.

The plan would save money by reducing the number of buses and drivers, and by cutting the number of bus stops that school officials must inspect and manage, according to Lester’s proposal. Single-stop or two-stop routes would also reduce the chances for “unanticipated delays, lost students, disoriented drivers and dispatch errors.”

But there are potential problems besides the increased distance to bus stops, according to the proposal. Consolidated bus routes could disrupt parents’ methods of transporting students to after-school care facilities, could increase the need for supervision at pickup and drop off points, and heighten parents’ concern that their child’s trip to the bus stop is hazardous.

Board members also expressed a variety of other concerns.

Dorothy Smith said she wanted to know whether the new routes would discourage parents from enrolling in the integration program. “If (the plan) is not right, then there won’t be any reason for busing anybody anyway, because they’ll all stay home,” she said.

Betty Brown and Ann Henley, two members of a committee that advises Supt. Thomas Payzant on transportation matters, said the plan shows promise as a cost-cutting measure, but many of the potential problems must be addressed.

Board member Kay Davis suggested that her colleagues consider trying the plan on a pilot basis, because applying it to 11,000 students at once might cause logistical problems.

The district and its students endured problems in September when a new computerized bus routing system left thousands of students stranded or late for classes. Computer data contained inaccurate information on student addresses, location of city streets, traffic and bus sizes.

In other action Tuesday, the school board voted to form a task force to develop a nuclear-age education curriculum for the city’s schools. Lester cast the only vote against the plan, which was supported by 12 speakers, including several students, during the board’s public comment session.