School District Still Offering, But Not Paying For, Hazardous Busing

Students who don't have safe paths to walk to school will once again have the opportunity to ride the bus instead. 

The Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education approved an agreement with Bridgewater Township Tuesday to maintain its hazardous busing for the 2010-2011 school year. The township had already approved the agreement earlier this month.

"This agreement is renewed every year," said Bridgewater-Raritan school board member Lynne Hurley, who is chairwoman of the finance and transportation committee. "This is done between the district and the township."

Hazardous busing is considered to be an offshoot of courtesy busing, which is provided for all students who live within a certain distance of an elementary, middle or high school. The state normally sets that distance at a mile-and-a-half from an elementary school, or two miles from a high school.

Bridgewater-Raritan School District had shortened that distance to provide courtesy busing for more students. That change did not account for students who are close enough to walk to school, but would be required to cross in an unsafe area.

Such areas, Hurley said, include locations without sidewalks, like Foothill Road, and major highways, like Route 22.

"Some restrictions clearly make it unsafe for children to walk to school," she said.

Hurley said walking to the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School, for example, would require walking on Foothill Road, while getting to Milltown Primary School requires crossing Route 22.

For those students, and others dealing with similar conditions, the district began to offer hazardous busing.

"This agreement has been in place for many years," Hurley said.

In the agreement, the township has actually paid the full costs of hazardous busing for students living in Bridgewater because it is in the position to fix hazards; only the township, for instance, could construct sidewalks on currently unsafe roadways. The district has no say over road work in the township.

The same agreement was approved with Raritan Borough, for the payments for its students to come from the municipality, not the school district.

Business Administrator Peter Starrs said the cost of the busing is determined by taking the total cost of transportation and dividing that by the total number of miles to find out the cost per mile. From there, he said, the district determines the number of miles the buses drive to transport students qualifying for hazardous busing, and multiplies it by the cost per mile.

In the 2009-2010 school year, the township paid $279,000 for hazardous busing.

With the agreement between the township and school district, Bridgewater Township has agreed to pay the costs from the 2009-2010 school year, and has committed to paying for the costs that will later be calculated for the 2010-2011 school year.

When the resolution was approved by the township, Council President Matthew Moench questioned the validity of this continued agreement and asked the other members of council whether it should be openly discussed with the district. While he said he is in favor of hazardous busing, he is not sure whether the township should pay, and this is a concern he also addressed last year.

No matter what, Moench said, the money is still coming from the taxpayers, and he questioned whether it was time to reexamine the agreement.

Still, the agreement was approved by the council, and has now been approved by the district.

Hurley said there has been no request from the council for reexamination of the agreement.

"We have not been approached about changing the agreement," she said. "It still came to us."