Tuesday, August 31, 1999
Fewer students will be busing
CPS cutbacks in effect today
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Some parents scurried to rearrange work schedules or organize carpools after learning this month they'd have to find other ways to get their children to school when Cincinnati Public Schools cut $1 million from its transportation budget.
Not Stan Corkin. The Clifton father made a quick decision when faced with the possibility that son Jesse could lose his ride to Sands Montessori in the West End.
He transferred him to another school.
“Every year, there was some threat of losing transportation. So we moved him to North Avondale, which is in our quadrant,” said Mr. Corkin, referring to the district's four attendance areas.
Class starts today, and administrators acknowledge they might have more transportation troubles than before. The school board agreed Aug. 9 to trim costs by cutting bus service for about 550 students.
But school officials are hoping many parents will have the same reaction Mr. Corkin did. The cut is one way the district can enforce attendance boundaries, said Kenton Cashell, the district's business executive.
More than three-fourths of the students who lost bus service are “special transfers,” or those enrolled in schools outside their attendance areas for reasons ranging from child-care accommodations to conflicts with other students.
Other students, who received $172 in state money to fund alternate transportation, lost service because they lived somewhere inaccessible to buses or attend schools with fewer than 30 riders.
That cut affected Norwood Baptist, Bethany, Cincinnati Hebrew Day, Landmark Christian Academy and Xavier Montessori schools, as well as five neighborhood schools to which most students walk — South Avondale, Rothenberg, Hoffman, Douglass and Bramble.
“We want to keep transportation open for students attending schools within their attendance boundaries,” Mr. Cashell said.
Such logic didn't work with Jackie Humphries of Avondale.
She transferred daughter Jasmine out of the district's Crest Hills Year-Round School in Bond Hill, where she's been since kindergarten, to a new, independent charter school because the district wouldn't bus the 8-year-old to Crest Hills.
“I was real happy with Crest Hills, and I wouldn't have looked at another school, but I can't run my kids all over the city every day,” Ms. Humphries said.
Jasmine will attend fourth grade in the new Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy in the West End, and she'll get there each day in a district-funded bus.
Anyone with transportation troubles or questions can call the district at 487-4300. For general questions, call the district's FACT line at 475-7099.
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