Elementary education in the Poughkeepsie City School District will look different this September.
Two schools and three buildings total will have new names. Many students will attend a different school building amid a reorganization to better group grade levels and resources.
And, more than 900 students can arrive at those buildings in school buses, under a plan to address a decades-old concern for city parents and families.
The Board of Education on Wednesday night approved transformative measures to better meet the educational, functional and inspirational needs of our youngest learners. None are more potentially impactful than a plan to institute school bus transportation across the elementary grade levels.
Residents will now be asked to vote on the bus plan, which would not result in increased taxes, through referendums on the school budget and board election ballot on May 20.
“I hope that Poughkeepsie tomorrow wakes up really understanding what this is,” Board of Education President Fatimah Carmen Martinez Santiago said after the bus proposal passed unanimously Wednesday. “So many people for so many years have been insisting on this. I really hope our community really recognizes that this actually happened.”
A video of the meeting is available on the district’s YouTube page.
The buses became possible for the district through exploring the Child Safety Zone program administered through the state Education Department and the Department of Transportation.
The district believes the availability of buses will lead to increased attendance, test scores and graduation rates, all elements for which the Child Safety Zone program was established.
Under the program, districts are eligible to receive 90% financial aid on providing transportation to students who live more than a half-mile from their school and would have to walk through a hazardous area as defined by factors like traffic, lane crossings, availability of sidewalks, traffic control devices or crossing guards, crime rates and others.
Should the bus expansion be approved by voters, the expense not covered by state aid would come out of the district’s fund balance and would not result in increased taxes for residents.
The district began investigating the program as part of its Elementary Reconfiguration initiative in response to concerns raised by parents and caregivers, and worked with consultants at Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES and bus safety company BusRight to analyze its eligibility and how different school boundaries would impact eligibility and expense.
The consultants found all district students living between a half-mile and 1.5 miles from their school under the reconfiguration plan are located in an eligible Child Safety Zone; the handful of students who live more than 1.5 miles are already eligible to receive transportation.
Take a look at the full report from Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES here and the presentation to the board Wednesday here.
According to the report, 922 students who would otherwise have to walk to school next year would receive transportation, with voter approval of the plan. That includes 395 of the 458 total students expected to attend Krieger Elementary and 239 of the 465 total students expected to attend Sojourner Truth Elementary, which is now Morse. Those are the two schools which, next year, will serve pre-K through second grade students. Because there are more 3-5 schools, fewer students at those buildings live more than a half-mile away.
The reconfiguration makes the transportation plan more economically feasible than at any time in the past. The district estimates it would need to operate 15 full-sized buses to serve all eligible students next year. If the district were not reorganizing, which includes staggering the start times of the two pre-K-2 schools and the three grades 3-5 schools, it may need twice as many buses, Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES’s Paul Overbaugh explained to the board Wednesday.
First Student, the company with which the district contracts for the majority of its buses and drivers, has assured the district it has enough staff to make the plan possible, and the district is seeking to hire bus drivers of its own at a job fair planned for March 22 at the Administration Building at 18 S. Perry St.
Residents in May will be able to vote on the two referendums approved by the board Wednesday. The first, Proposition 2, asks voters if they will authorize the board to provide transportation to all eligible pupils, and the second, Proposition 3, asks voters if they will authorize the establishment of the Child Safety Zones that will enable the district to receive state aid.
The meeting ended with several board members acknowledging the gravity of the changes enacted, including the bus plan, reorganization and building renaming.
“Tonight was a monumental night for children, present children and future children, of this community,” Board Member Hon. Thomas O’Neill said. “Tonight we addressed issues that have been spoken about for decades, especially with regard to the issue of busing and our children’s safety going to and from school. It’s incredible.”
