Juggling Act

There’s only so many hours in the day yet so many concerns, transportation included, for school district administrators to prioritize

It’s that time of year again.
Though the IRS remains a very big concern this month, schools across the nation are knee-deep in the annual budget cycle as plans are being brought to fruition for the 2008-2009 school year.

Transportation is a vital program utilized by most public school districts to ensure students can learn and grow in the classroom and become solid contributors to society. Understandably, it necessitates plenty of consideration from superintendents. And it requires a juggling act.

“Superintendents and school business officials today are finding that they must be a master of all trades,” said John Musso, executive director for the Association of School Business Officials International. “In times of declining and competing resources, more and more school systems are finding themselves having to prioritize various programs and services to balance budgets. This becomes a difficult task at best, attempting to keep the reductions as far away from the classroom as possible.”

Something has to give, and school support services are usually the first to be targeted for cutbacks. In small and large school systems alike, and especially those where transportation is not mandated, Musso said the yellow school bus can quickly rise to the top of the cut or reduction list. Schools must create as many efficiencies as possible by filling buses to capacity, establish longer routes and even place ads on buses for additional revenue.

“In the past few years, transportation departments have become very efficient at continuing to provide services as they scaled back budgets. With the ever-increasing and stringent mandates for No Child Left Behind and other instructional standards, superintendents are finding themselves wearing many different hats as they provide the best quality education possible for all of their students,” Musso added.

“Superintendents have always relied on their support departments to handle the detailed operations they support, but it becomes even more critical for collaboration between support services and the instructional services.”

Lloyd Kirby is on both sides of the issue as the superintendent and transportation supervisor for Colon Community Schools, located about 30 miles southeast of Kalamazoo, Mich.

“All the superintendents are aware of the critical issue of the safety of students, and school transportation is a vital part of it,” he said recently.

Kirby is intimately aware of just how vital the school transportation department is, as cutbacks were forced on all school programs. While he and his staff must wear many hats, Kirby said one benefit is he can go directly to the school board or country transportation meetings with issues he sees firsthand and can give his own insights into issues affecting all districts. He said he also is able to share transportation concerns directly with other superintendents through the state association.

School Transportation News sent an online survey to more than 700 superintendents and other school administration decision-makers in an attempt to gauge the level of collaboration with their school transportation departments.

While results were far from scientific, 57 percent of the 130 who responded at this writing said the school administration and the transportation department operated as a “cohesive unit” on such issues as budget items, emergency preparedness and risk management. Three in 10 said the relationship was strong, but some improvement was necessary. Nearly 10 percent responded that the relationship was average at best and there was a definite need for improvement.

“Today, superintendents must rely even more on the unsung heroes in the support divisions to help them pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat when it comes to being creative about maximization of resources,” said Musso.

A far more difficult and problematic question was then posed in the survey, as several respondents duly noted, on the importance of different school programs when planning budgets. Ambiguous from the standpoint of, theoretically, how educators could truly rank one vital student service over another, it remained an appropriate question to ask, as priorities — and difficult decisions — are a fact of life. The answers give school transporters a snap shot of the priorities administration officials must make when delegating the bottom line, and it probably reinforces something they already know.

Not surprisingly, many of school district resources are concentrated on the classroom. Respondents were asked to rank from greatest importance to least six general categories of school functions, and overall transportation came in fifth place. In addition to classroom instruction and transportation, facilities/grounds, nutrition, special education, and technology were also considered.

Overall, more than 88 percent said classroom instruction came up on top when preparing budgets is concerned, followed in a distant second by special education at nearly 50 percent of all responses. Technology ranked third overall at nearly 36 percent of the responses and nutrition fourth at nearly 34 percent. Thirty-two percent placed transportation just ahead of facilities and grounds, which finished in sixth place at 27 percent of all responses.