D122 Candidates Answer: What Can the District Do About Transportation Funding?

Every day this week, Patch will give you the District 122 Board of Education candidates' answers to a different question that deals with the financial and educational issues facing the school district.

We'll compile all the responses here, ordered in the way names will be on the ballot, and you can also get more election information on the . Today's question is:

Transportation was a point of concern for both the district and parents this year. With funding from the state continuing to dip, what else can the school district do?   

A majority of our district’s parents rely heavily on our school district’s transportation system for the safe and reliable delivery of our children to school. A change in those services impacts nearly every family in District 122. Currently, a transportation levy is included with every local property tax bill and taxes are appropriated by the state from Income Tax revenue. The state continues to cut transportation reimbursements to school districts because of the state’s financial problems.

The shortfall in the critical transportation funds caused by the state results in increased local property tax levies. We need to contact our state representatives and senators to demand payment to the district of these critical transportation funds. At the same time, we need to look at alternative sources of funding and, of course, reduce spending to the lowest level consistent with providing our kids the safest, most efficient means of transportation possible. A safe, caring environment from the start of their learning day to the end of it can only contribute to keeping our children’s educational achievements high.

Transportation was a major concern to the entire board. A lot of different strategies were involved in coming up with this area as a budgetary savings. I agreed with the tiered busing, however I felt that the schedule with junior high starting first would have been more appropriate and would have been justified more to the parents with those children home first before the intermediates.

In regard to what else can we do for this area, parents suggested charging the users for the bus fees if the state continues to decrease funding. My recommendation would be for all of our parents to campaign with the state and local representatives on this matter so that the funding of school transportation is state funded.

The decision to consolidate bus routes was not a easy decision, but it did save money that the state wasn't providing. In all decisions not everyone can be happy. I think this was probably one that saved the most. We'll have to see what happens  as to it's effectiveness.

Transportation is a hot topic. Many parents are very unhappy with the decisions that were made in regards to transportation cuts. With the state’s inability to pay its bills on time and their idea to cut funding from transportation leaves us all with some difficult decisions. I have spoken to many parents whose children are going to be affected by this change. Some even made offers to pay a fee to stop the changes.

When looking at the district’s budget of more than $50 million it seems difficult to understand how a cut of less than o.5 percent of the budget was that much of a gain. I am not sure that the estimated savings was worth putting children on the bus so early and disrupting the lives of so many families.

The school district should always work with the transportation provider to make sure the bus routes are as efficient as possible.

The district can try to generate more community involvement and support. The school board needs to continuously work and maintain strong partnerships with the other taxing bodies: the village, the township, and the Park District, to continuously come up with solutions to produce money for the district. They could also continue to work with developers to get more money for our our schools. The board can create a strong alliance with the Village Board to work on ways to get alternative revenue as oppose to going to the taxpayer.