Rollout of PW-S busing changes irk parents

Busing changes in the Port Washington-Saukville School District that will determine which children receive free transportation to school have come as a shock to some parents who thought they knew how their children were getting to school come September.

They say the district sprang the changes on them in an email sent just a month before classes begin, provided confusing information and in some case put the onus on parents to prove their children would have to walk to school through hazard zones to qualify for district-funded school transportation.

But Supt. Michael McMahon said the district disseminated busing information to parents as soon as it received it from Johnson School Bus Service, which provides transportation for the school system. The changes are needed, he said, to essentially apply existing district policy based on state law to a busing system that had fallen apart during the pandemic and through last school year provided inconsistent and unfair taxpayer subsidized transportation to students.

On July 31, the district sent an email to parents with several back-to-school reminders, one of which was to register for busing services, that also informed them about changes to who qualifies for free transportation.

That shocked Kirsten Coenen, whose family lives in the Hidden Hills subdivision on Port Washington’s west side and whose children attend Saukville Elementary School about two miles away. 

“It’s extremely frustrating to me that the district rolled this out 33 days prior to the start of school with the idea that it’s up to parents to identify hazard zones,” she said. “The district didn’t do its due diligence prior to the rollout of this.”

State law requires public school districts to provide transportation for students whose safe walking route to the schools they attend is more than two miles. Students who live closer to schools than that may still qualify for district-funded transportation if their routes to school include hazard zones based on traffic volume and speed, a lack of infrastructure, environmental hazards and criminal or social risks.

Concerned her children would no longer qualify for district-funded transportation, Coenen scrambled to analyze their walking route to school and identified several hazard areas along the way, including an I-43 underpass. She later confirmed with the district that her children will continue to qualify for district busing, but she is concerned about next year when her oldest child attends Thomas Jefferson Middle School on Port Washington’s near north side.

“Given when this was rolled out, I don’t understand why the district couldn’t just continue doing what it has been doing and come up with a clearer plan for next school year,” she said. 

McMahon said the district has been pushing Johnson School Bus Service to make changes, and while it would have liked to have been able to notify parents sooner, that was not possible.

“We would have liked to notify parents about this in May or June, but the information we needed from Johnson Bus wasn’t available then,” he said. 

Johnson School Bus had previously evaluated transportation requests, and prior to the pandemic parents of students who did not qualify for district-funded busing could pay for it. That ended during the pandemic when the company began providing transportation for any student who requested it, and while the company charged the district for those rides, it stopped invoicing parents who previously would have had to pay for the service, McMahon said.

“Johnson Bus was making these decisions, and since Covid, anyone who called was essentially getting busing,” he said. “We had students who lived a block from their elementary school getting busing.”

Working with a new Johnson School Bus Service manager and in response to questions from parents about inconsistencies in bus service, the district convinced the company to create an online bus registration system that allows the district’s busing policy to be applied as it was before the pandemic, McMahon said. 

“Prior to this, parents had to call Johnson Bus and often ended on hold waiting to talk to someone,” he said. 

At the same time, the district worked with Retler Corp., which has conducted outdoor facility studies for the school system, to update its transportation hazard zones. Students whose walking route to school falls within one of those zones qualify for district-funded busing. Parents of students whose route isn’t in an identified hazard zone but believe it includes a hazard can apply to the district for busing, a process that has led to the district identifying additional hazard zones, McMahon said.  

The district will evaluate those requests and respond to parents within 10 days. It has set a bus registration deadline of Aug. 15.

The system, McMahon said, is consistent with those of other school districts serviced by Johnson School Bus Service.

Parents of students who don’t qualify for district-funded transportation can pay for so-called city bus service. That service won’t necessarily pick students up outside their homes but rather make neighborhood stops. The cost of the service is $250 per student per semester and the district, not the bus service, will handle invoicing. 

“That’s right in line with what other districts are charging,” McMahon said.

“This is truly just about providing equity in our bus service.”