BY KARISSA MILLER

Iredell-Statesville Schools is hoping to save millions of dollars by tweaking its bus transportation services during the 2024-2025 school year.

District officials have implemented a series of cost-saving measures in an effort to address budget shortfalls in the I-SS transportation department, which spent $1.7 million over the state allotment for busing in 2023-2024.

The first change is implementing standardized start and end times for elementary, middle and high schools. District elementary schools start the day at 7:20 a.m. and ends at 2:10 p.m. I-SS middle and high schools begin class at 8:30 a.m. and end at 3:20 p.m.

I-SS Chief Operating Officer Mark Shinkaruk explained that the move to a more uniform start time will help with the efficiency of bus routes and reduce the number of buses needed.

The second change is providing community bus stops for students that attend I-SS International Baccalaureate schools.

That measure “ensures transportation consistency for choice programs and further reduces bus numbers,” Shinkaruk said.

“Some of our choice programs, for example Dual Immersion, don’t come with transportation,” Shinkaruk said. “We have provided modified transportation at our IB middle and high schools to provide as much access as possible.”

I-SS Deputy Superintendent Billie Berry knows firsthand that just because your child was at a choice school one year doesn’t guarantee they will attend one the next year.

Berry said his child wanted to continue in the choice program. However, as a working dad, he was unable to make the community bus stop time so he ended up sending his child to another school within district.

“We wish we could continue those transportation services, but it’s not fair to the taxpayers to have to pay for the inefficiencies of the system,” Berry said.

I-SS Superintendent Jeff James said that any transportation funding shortfalls must be covered out of the district’s local budget.

“If we are not efficient in transportation, it impacts classroom instruction. This means less teachers, less teacher assistants and less support staff,” James said. “We need to be as efficient as possible.”

I-SS Vice Chairman Charles Kelly said James inherited many of the transportation problems the district is experiencing when he took over as superintendent.

“There haven’t been consistent moves to address the problems with the routes in the past. Dr. James is one of those that if you show him a problem, he’s on it,” Kelly said. “He’s been working on it to allow for all of our bus routes to be more efficient while making sure safety is the No. 1 priority.”

Shinkaruk said that the district has seen an uptick in car riders. The district wants to encourage students to ride the bus, which would help alleviate some traffic congestion around I-SS schools.

Troutman Elementary has around 900 students this year, and the car rider line is now longer than it has ever been. The school wasn’t built for that capacity and many of the roads around that area are two- lane roads.

Bus transportation based on efficiency

According to I-SS Transportation Director Jimmy Calvert, the district has taken 34 buses off the road.

Last year, the district used 209 buses and now is using 175 buses to run routes.

He said that it costs an average of $33,000 to $35,000 per bus to operate for the year. The reduction in buses will save I-SS more than $1 million.

However, that doesn’t mean the district will save more than a $1 million because they also have to consider longer drive time and other factors that come into play.

“It’s hard to give an exact figure at this time of the savings. We are still working on adjusting bus routes and analyzing our efficiency,” Calvert explained.

The 34 parked buses, he said, should lead to a higher efficiency score in addition to operational savings, but the district will have to wait until next year to receive additional money for the increased efficiency.

“Efficiency is based on the previous year,” he said.

Efficiency rating impacts funding

North Carolina provides funding for bus transportation based on an efficiency rating.

That rating is based on the following factors:

• Number of buses in use;
• Cost to operate the bus (fuel, repair parts, driver and mechanic salaries, etc.);
• Number of students on a bus (an efficient bus should have 100 students riding on it. This is achieved through tiered bus runs.); and
• Mileage it takes to get every student to and from school.

Last year, the I-SS bus efficiency rating was 85 percent, which means the district received 85 percent of that efficiency funding.

“The goal for this year is to raise the efficiency to above the state average of 89.78 percent, while getting our students safely to and from school every single day,” Calvert said.

In addition to increasing the efficiency rating, the reduction of buses has helped the district compensate for the driver shortage.

“While we are still short drivers, the gap is much smaller this year,” Calvert said.

Additional Challenges

Superintendent James explained that one of the biggest challenges for the school system is the “state’s outdated formula” for funding transportation.

“It’s more than 40 years old. It has never been adjusted for innovation,” he said.

As in many districts, I-SS offers choice programs, such as, early college high schools, Career Academy and Technical School, Dual Immersion and International Baccalaureate programs.

“If you are innovative and offer choices, the state formula penalizes you for those programs,” James said. “I-SS gets paid in the morning from home to school and in the afternoon from school to home. Anything done outside of those hours, we get a reduced fee or no money at all.”

N.C. G.S. 115C-246 states that buses must be routed “so that the bus passes within one mile of the residence of each pupil assigned to that bus.” Any bus stop within one mile of the residence is “legal.”

Also, according to G.S. 115C-242, “A local board of education which elects to operate a school bus transportation system, shall not be required to provide transportation for any school employee, nor shall, such board be required to provide transportation for any pupil living within one and a half miles of the school in which such pupil is enrolled.”

Parents who request for their student(s) to attend a different school other than the one they are districted to attend, transportation will not be provided.

I-SS officials said that the only exception to that is when the district has to place a student in a school outside of their school boundaries for a service that their home school cannot provide.