BONNYVILLE – Northern Lights Public School (NLPS) students who live close to their school but want to take the bus will now have to pay for the service.
The board of trustees voted in favour of implementing transportation fees during their May 6 meeting. Coming into effect for the 2020/21 school year, the fee will be charged to students who want to use the school's bussing but live close enough to their school that they aren't covered by provincial funding.
“We recognize that we’ve been able to have the advantage, or the luxury, of not having transportation fees for the past several years, and recognizing that this may be a hardship for some families, we proposed using the same rates that we used in the 2016/15 school year,” detailed trustee Karen Packard, chair for the transportation committee.
For students who are in early childcare programs to Grade 4 who are 1.6-kilometres or closer to their schools, they will be charged $380. Students in Grades 5 and 6 who are 2.4-kilometres or closer will have a fee of $380 to ride the bus and Grades 7 to 12 will be charged $500 if they live 2.4-kilometres or closer to their school.
Board chair Arlene Hrynyk stated implementing fee comes out of necessity.
“I don’t think there’s any one of us in this meeting that wants to create any further hardships for our families, but the reality is we can no longer afford to provide a service that we’re not funded for in the way we have."
Trustee Mandi Skogen, who sits on the transportation committee, stressed the decision wasn’t taken lightly.
“When we did take away the transportation fees a few years ago, it was because we recognized that we wanted to be able to help families out as much as we could,” she stated. “But, one of the issues… was not only did we drop the fees that were currently on the bus at the time but we also gained a ton of riders because of no fees and our budget was out of control. It just wasn’t sustainable unfortunately. With everything that’s coming down and budgets tightening up, it's really unfortunate, and it's something that we have to do because we can’t keep running with a deficit on that and taking dollars out of our classroom to sustain it.”
The school division's administration still has to work out the finer details for the bus fees, including potential payment plans to make sure all families who need the transportation are still able to access it.
“There will indeed be a process in place to assist those families who wouldn’t have the financial means to pay a fee for services for in-town bussing,” detailed associate superintendent Bill Driedger. “We’ll also be looking at ensuring that there are reasonable payment plans in place so that it’s not an out of the gate kind of fee, rather a fee that can be dispersed over a period of time.”
According to Driedger, the additional income won’t completely cover the transportation budget deficit but it will offer some assistance in that regard.