The discussions over local budgets are over for another year, but one number continues to stick with me: the nearly $9.6 million the WW-P school district spends each year to bus its students.
The district has about 10,000 students, so at its simplest, that works out to almost $960 per student for something that has nothing to do with education. (I know not everyone gets bused, but I am trying to keep the math simple.)
The total price tag, which is for the upcoming school year, is 5 percent more than we are paying for transportation in the school year that is almost over, according to the presentation at the April 29 public hearing on the budget.
While I am under no illusion that the district can do away with busing (and indeed there are state rules about when districts must bus), it certainly is in our interest as taxpayers to try to reduce our busing bill by creating more safe ways to walk (or bike) to school. Another reason to reduce the amount of busing is of course the health benefits of a relatively short walk or bike ride to school.
If every bus holds 70 students, we spend about $65,000 per bus. Round down if you like, even to $50,000, but that is a lot of money. Now think how many buses go through your neighborhood.
Imagine if we could reduce our busing bill by $1 million, or a bit more than 10 percent of our current costs. Those annual savings could pay for an awful lot of sidewalks and adult crossing guards (and that’s without any state grant money from the safe routes to school program), and quickly lead to net savings that would benefit us, the taxpayers.
How would we do this? It will require cooperation among the school administration, the school board, the West Windsor and Plainsboro governments (who actually pay for sidewalks and crossing guards), the police departments, and perhaps others to design walkable routes to school and for taxpayers to insist upon it. It may also take several years to actually add all of the needed sidewalks. But I am confident it can be done. We just need to start.
Silvia Ascarelli
Melville Road, West Windsor
