School trustees spurn longer walk distance

Hamilton public school trustees are panning a staff recommendation to lengthen the maximum one-kilometre walking distance for kindergarten students as a way to help reduce an ongoing shortage of school bus drivers.

Associate director Stacey Zucker said a preliminary review by the board’s transportation consortium estimates making kindergarten subject to the same 1.6-kilometre maximum for all other elementary grades would take 3.5 to five buses off the road.

She said a survey of other boards across the province found many have a single walking distance for all elementary students, albeit not Hamilton’s Catholic board, which sets a 1.2-kilometre limit for kindergarten and 1.6 kilometres for the higher grades. Zucker said another option the consortium studied is to increasing the 1.6-kilometre maximum for Grades 1 to 8 by 0.2 kilometres, which would require about 1,200 more students to walk to school and take three to five buses off the road.

“Those the types of things they can do and that’s a really preliminary look because there’s a lot of detail involved, plus there are safety concerns and that sort of thing where people would still be receiving transportation inside the walk distance,” she said.

Staff will present those and other potential options to the board’s policy committee on Oct. 10, but the kindergarten recommendation got a frosty reception from members of the finance and facilities committee.

West Mountain trustee Wes Hicks said efforts should instead focus attracting more drivers with better wages and working conditions.

“We’re on the wrong track here,” Hicks said. “You’re penalizing the students of this board, looking at ways to solve the number of buses, when I think it should be solved from another direction.”

Board chair Todd White also opposed the kindergarten option, but said the consortium is short about 20 bus drivers and trustees will face a financial reckoning when the existing contract with bus providers runs out in about three years.

He said boards elsewhere have seen costs rise by an average of 30 per cent, which would add an extra $5 million to $7 million to the Hamilton public board’s current bill — already about $1 million more than funded by the province.

“If this continues the way it does now, we have kids waiting at bus stops with no bus coming,” White said. “If you’re OK with that, then we can keep the policy as it is. If you’re not OK with that, then we have to start making some tough decisions.”