On April 2, 2015, Rocky View School (RVS) Trustees voted to increase student bus fees by $25/student for the 2015-2016 school year. RVS says this hike is necessary due to an $874,000 shortfall in transportation funding.
“Given the challenges with the province’s proposed budget, our Board saw no other alternative but to increase bus fees by $25/student,” said Board Chair Colleen Munro.
Munro explained that as of March 26 the ministry has effectively frozen all board reserves. In order to access these funds, all jurisdictions must seek approval by the government on or before May 31, 2015, as well as submit a plan outlining how the board will transition away from the use of reserves and demonstrate its ability to operate within the annual allocation by the following school year.
“If the draw on our reserves is not approved, we hope to be able to advise parents by the end June of a change to this fee,” said Munro. “However, based on the recovery plan proposed by our administration, we would hope the government approves the use of these reserves.”
According to Darrell Couture, RVS’ Associate Superintendent – Business and Operations, the jurisdiction intends to introduce triple busing in Airdrie in September 2016 and explore the feasibility of increased double or in some cases triple busing within the Town of Cochrane beginning September 2017.
“The introduction of triple busing in Airdrie will save us approximately $550,000, as fewer buses are required to transport students to and from school,” said Couture. “This proposal will not have any impacts to service or instruction, however, it will require us to modify school start times for all Airdrie schools.”
Couture described triple busing as each bus providing three distinct runs, both in the morning and afternoon. He said definitive times for each school would be identified before the end of June 2016.
Bev LaPeare, RVS Trustee for Ward 3, had this to say, “School fees are not increasing. They’ll be the same as they’ve been for the past few years. I feel strongly that whenever we can prevent downloading extra costs onto parents we need to do what’s within our ability to do so. As you can see from the press release regarding transportation fees, our transportation budget is in bad shape and we have no alternative. I’m hopeful that the government will approve the use of reserves for next year since we have a plan to remedy the situation with triple bussing in Airdrie the following year. The recent budget was pretty mind blowing. We never ever considered that growth would not be funded. All of the budget work that’s been done at RVS has to be redone. We’ll have 1000 students on our doorstep without funding. These students have always come with about $10,000 each so normally we’d be able to hire teachers for them. Now we’ll be about 44 teachers short. We had worked under the assumption that the cuts would be done equitably across the province in terms of cuts to grants and a decrease in per pupil funding as opposed to 0 funding for new students. The budget will be passed at our Board table on June 4 and there’ll be a lot of discussion between now and then to figure out the best way to steer this ship in this terrible storm”.
With the $25/student increase, student transportation fees are set at $200/rural student, $220/urban student. The maximum rate is $400/rural family and $440/urban family. Bus fees for non-resident students will be established at a later date. RVS’ student transportation fee schedule can be found at: http://www.rockyview.ab.ca/registration/schoolfees.
Couture said the $874,000 shortfall is an accumulated effect of a decrease in grants and ineligible riders, additional urban passengers, and a contractual three percent increase in bus contractor payments.
