As part of our continuing election coverage the Gazette asked candidates in the Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater riding for their views on rural busing issues.
With more and more Albertans living in urban centres, rural schools are getting smaller and students are often traveling further to get to them. What is the maximum length students should travel on a school bus? What would you do to reduce these travel times?
Gino Akbari — Liberal
Studies indicate that anything more than an hour on the bus reduces student sleep time and academic attentiveness. I believe that travel time should not exceed 45 minutes, taking under consideration student delays. We can tackle the long travel times in three ways:
First and foremost, making the long travel time as productive for the students as we can by providing them tools such as writing tables and technologies that allows students to focus on completing their homework and getting a head start before reaching school or home.
Increasing the number of buses and schools rather than cutting down. Education is our future and our revenue should be used to invest in our children's future.
Under the Liberal endowment for education plan that will work towards eliminating tuition fees by 2025, we will have room to generate and provide funding for rural school transportation issues.
Jeff Johnson — Progressive Conservative
I recognize that school bus travel impacts the school-life balance for students, both for students in rural and urban settings. Our 10-point plan for education brought forward two trial projects — one to reduce travel times to less than an hour where possible, by adding routes and enhancing them; and another to introduce technology in circumstances where it is not practical to reduce travel time.
Technology will be able to enhance the bus ride time by allowing students to work on homework or get prepared for the coming school day. I believe education is a lifelong endeavour and that a child's education is not just from what is learned sitting behind a desk in a classroom. Having access to technology that allows children to explore the world around them is something that will give our children the knowledge to excel in an increasingly mobile and connected world.
Mandy Melnyk — NDP
In the short term, the NDP takes the position that all school boards must be provided with funding that enables them to do multi-year proactive planning and not be in the place of always reacting to new challenges, and that provides adequate money to ensure children receive an excellent education wherever they live.
In some areas this will mean keeping a small school in a mature neighbourhood open. In others it will mean enough transportation funding to keep bus times reasonable for all children, perhaps with more small buses rather than longer routes.
Funding to municipalities for proper road maintenance will also contribute to better busing times and safety. Each school board needs resources to design what will work best for them. In the longer term, the NDP offers a wide range of proposals to bring new life and prosperity to rural Alberta that will see schools needed to meet the needs of a growing population.
Travis Olson — Wildrose
The Wildrose education policy is focused on local decision-making and giving parents more freedom. We will strengthen the role of local boards. We will depoliticize the issue of where schools get built by allowing locally elected school boards to decide where schools should be located and where the school bus routes go.
Not only will we give parents and residents more say in the operation of their school boards, we'll give parents more choice in where to send their children by letting operational and maintenance funding to follow the student to all Catholic and charter schools.
With these policies in place, the people in the best place to know what's the best way to reduce travel times, and what's the best maximum time — the people who actually live in the local region — will be making these decisions.
