2011 school transportation report

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School Transportation Report 2011 Safe Routes to School, Lexington Public Schools Transportation, Lexpress Introduction How do Lexington's nearly 6400 students get to and from school? Is the transportation method a function of their particular school, day of the week, grade, or morning versus afternoon? Why does your student take the school bus? Why not? In preparing the 2011 -12 school fiscal budget, Superintendent Dr. Ash identified the line . item of Lexington Public Schools school bus transportation as an area which would require additional funding if level services are to be maintained. The service of school bus transportation typically does not break even — it continues to be subsidized even though it is a fee - for - service. For 2010 -11, more students have qualified for both free distance- eligible bus service (state mandated if grade K -6 student lives 2 miles or greater from school) and for assistance due to financial hardship. The result has been an increase in student school bus ridership but a greater deficit in school bus funding. Currently, 33% of Lexington students are bussed. With 150 -250 vehicles transporting the majority of students to the town's nine schools each am and pm, many in our community feel that it is time to re- examine ways to increase school bus ridership and alternative transportation methods in order to decrease the number of cars at Lexington schools. Together, the Lexington Sidewalk Committee's Safe Routes To School (SRTS) program, Lexington Public Schools (LPS), and Lexpress sponsored a parent survey in March 2011 in order to better understand how well our present public school transportation system serves the needs of our students. The goal of the anonymous survey is to gather information on how to best improve issues such as traffic congestion and safety at our nine neighborhood schools. The last survey of this nature was performed in 2002 by the Lexington No- Idling Committee and the Lexington PTA/PTO Presidents Board. For the School Transportation survey 2011, see Appendix I. For the comments received from the School Transportation Survey 2011, see Appendix lI. Results Of the approximately 4,100 Lexington public school families surveyed using the LPS Global Connect system, 1,237 responses (30 %) were received within the twelve days that the survey was open. The survey consisted of 9 questions where multiple responses were allowed so as to meet the needs of families with more than one public school -aged child. Because of this, the constant sum of these questions will not equal 100 %. An open -ended response section was also included, which collected 664 comments (54 %). 2