When it comes to getting students to school on time, School District 57 is leaving the driving to its existing contractor.
The district has awarded a new eight-year busing contract that expires June 30, 2020 to Diversified Transportation Ltd., which has been providing the service for the past nine years.
The contract is worth about $4.5 million per year and allows for inflationary adjustments, wage increases and changes in the price of fuel and other utilities.
"Going forward in 2012-13, we should be able to hold the line on transportation spending at the 2011-12 level because of this contract, so we're pleased," said School District 57 secretary-treasurer Bryan Mix. "The value of the contract could go up or down, depending on the economic conditions, but it goes up or down at a predictor not related to negotiations."
Since 2002, all B.C. school districts have been locked into 10-year funding formula that determines how much school boards receive for every student that qualifies for bus service. This school year, that resulted in a shortfall between funding and spending of about $500,000. The new funding formula has been designed to eliminate future shortfalls.
"In the last three years we've underspent the budget and it looks like we'll underspend again this year, but the issue trustees keep [referring to] is the funding formula didn't provide enough to fund the program," said Mix.
"The board determines the level of the program, and we only have one funder of the program, the ministry. So if the funding formula doesn't go up, you can't ignore programming costs going up, and those program costs eventually went over the funding level. Now, the funding formula has been reworked with geographical adjustments so that shouldn't be an issue any longer."
On any given school day, Diversified has close to 80 buses moving about 4,000 students to and from schools in Prince George, McBride, Valemount and Mackenzie.
"Our district is very unique because we have 100 per cent contract busing," said Mix. "We don't have our own buses, bus barns or drivers, the contractor does all that for us.
"We're probably one of the most complex transportation systems in British Columbia because of the distances, the number of schools, number of routes and we have a very exceptional special needs busing system. We have an exceptional contractor and the school community is in good hands."
n In other school board news, trustees were told in Tuesday's public meeting that two school board trustee candidates in the November municipal election -- Bal Gill and Rhonda White -- failed to file campaign financing disclosure statements within 120 days of the election, in accordance with Section 90 of the Local Government Act. The deadline for filing was March 19. If Gill and White pay a $500 fine and file their statements within 30 days of the deadline, they would be allowed to run for trustee positions in future elections. Failure to do so would disqualify them.
n The school board has approved a $32,482 adventure playground to be installed at cole Lac des Bois.
