St. Albert Public wants parents to weigh in on how it should plug a $450,000 hole in its transportation budget.
St. Albert Public Schools put out a survey this week that asks parents how the board should change its busing service to manage mounting debts.
The province pays for the cost to bus students if they live beyond the 2.4-km walk limit from their local school. St. Albert’s public and Catholic schools have for many years also provided busing for kids that live within the limit (1.6 to 2.4 km from school, generally speaking) or who attend programs of choice such as Cogito offered only in specific schools.
The board used to be able to cover its busing costs by charging all families a fee, board superintendent Krimsen Sumners said – the beyond-limit students effectively subsidized the within-limit ones. That changed in 2017 with the passage of Bill 1, which banned boards from charging bus fees for students who lived beyond the walk limit.
When the board raised fees on within-limit students some $100 to $160 to compensate, then-education minister David Eggen vetoed the move, capped the increase at $50 and ordered any excess cash the board collected refunded. This fee cap means the board can’t run buses to programs of choice on a cost-recovery basis, Sumners said.
The public board’s deficit isn’t just due to Bill 1 and within-limit riders, said board treasurer Michael Brenneis. The district is also seeing high student growth and just gained two new schools, both of which mean more riders and more within-limit riders. The province also hasn’t changed the amount of cash it gives to bus each student since 2012, which means its support hasn’t kept up with inflation and fuel costs.
While the board has an efficient triple-run system (where one bus serves three schools per run), they’ve still had to raid reserves and instructional dollars each year to make up for the lost cash, Sumners said.
“By the end of next year ... we’re looking at a $1.1-million accumulated deficit,” she said, some $450,000 would happen this coming school year.
That’s not sustainable, she argued.
“In this economic environment, we have to be fiscally responsible, and running a million-dollar deficit is just not going to do it. We have to do something.”
How to break even
The public board is doing a two-part survey on this issue to determine what changes it should make to busing, Brenneis said.
The first part, which will run until the end of June, will determine what parents value when it comes to busing. Parents will be asked to comment on issues such as transportation funding (should we just keep using instructional dollars?), the walk limit (should we drop service for within-limit students?), and whether or not the City of St. Albert should take over transportation. Those comments will then be shared for other survey participants to rank. The second part, which would focus on specific policy changes, would happen in around October.
Greater St. Albert Catholic was also affected by Bill 1 and ran transportation deficits in the last two years, said Catholic board superintendent David Keohane. This year, however, by cutting four routes and raising fees $75 over two years, it’s poised to break even.
“Breaking even on transportation is very, very hard,” Keohane said, and it took a lot of work to pull this off.
“We believe we’ve found the sweet spot.”
When asked to explain why the Catholic board could break even while the public one could not, Brenneis said it could be because St. Albert Public had more students overall and more within-walk-limit students, as it had two high schools instead of one in town and had two new schools open in two years in town instead of just one. St. Albert Public also had more programs of choice than the Catholic board. The Catholic board also has many rural students, which are funded at a different rate than urban ones.
The St. Albert Public survey was expected to go live at www.spschools.org soon after this issue went to press.
