The Transportation Service Standards, which contains a proposed change to 3 Bell Times, has been pulled from today’s Board Meeting agenda (May 4). The District acknowledges the community feedback it has received in the past couple of weeks and has decided to do more work before presenting to the full board.
I’ve decided to provide here a much expanded version of my previously planned board comments for the May 4 meeting. I am hopeful that the District will make significant updates and some of this will become irrelevant. Nonetheless, I am sharing because I want my constituents to know my thinking on this issue and where I will continue to advocate on behalf of them.
I oppose this change because I do not believe that it is in the best interests of our students, families, and staff. It will have ripple effects throughout our city and I will continue to engage stakeholders on this all- encompassing issue.
Background on Bell Times
Bell Times are the time of day when our schools start and end. They are embedded in our Transportation Service Standards (TSS). The TSS defines who is eligible for district provided transportation, and the start and finish times for schools are included because the TSS defines what time is the earliest bus pick up. The full board votes to approve the TSS annually.
Under the 2021-22 TSS, about 20% of our students are eligible for bus transportation. Note this is a data point for eligible students, not riders.
We currently do not have enough bus drivers to operate our existing routes under a 2 Bell Time schedule. In October 2021, we suspended 142 bus routes when we lost about 100 bus drivers due to the vaccine mandate. The district’s transportation team applied an equity lens both to which routes to suspend, and which routes to restore.
Currently, we have about 52 routes at 18 schools still suspended. See here for a list of suspended routes. 1,421 eligible riders out of our total 50,000 students currently have suspended routes. No schools in District 5 and District 7 had any suspended routes. Districts 2 and 4 have the most schools with suspended routes, and the most suspended routes.
To address this, the District staff has proposed moving to three Bell Times. District staff estimates this would:
(1) reduce the number of bus drivers needed because drivers would drive multiple routes and
(2) help us recruit bus drivers because the District can guarantee 6 hours of work, which would increase total pay to drivers.
Significantly reducing the number of bus drivers and buses we need will also save us ~ $5M this year, according to District estimates. The District has not provided detail on how they arrived at that estimate, despite my own multiple requests and requests from some of my fellow Directors. I think there is good reason for this, see at the end of this statement.
Why I’m Opposed
Community Feedback on Impact
The primary reason I’m opposed to this proposal is because my constituents are overwhelmingly opposed to it. Last Monday, District staff shared with me that there were over 2,000 submissions to Let’s Talk. I, myself, have received many emails and phone calls in opposition, and only 1 in support.
A set of parents put together a survey, with 809 respondents within 24 hours. Key findings include:
In Seattle, we have an engaged public where many issues often cause impassioned comment from multiple perspectives and it is sometimes difficult to ascertain what the will of the public is – this is not one of those issues.
The Remedy Causes Greater Harm
Reliable bus transportation is a must for student academic success. The District has found a solution that addresses a bus driver shortage and for now, the District has assigned the 8:30am start time to middle and high school students to capture the benefits of more sleep and to align academic and extracurricular schedules for high school students.
Yet, I believe that in restoring service to 1,421 eligible students, we risk expanding to a larger universe of 30,000 elementary school students, failing to arrive at school on time with 7:30AM and 9:30AM start times. That is a pool of students at risk of arriving late to school expanded by a factor of 21X.
Furthermore, the 7:30 start time…
And the 9:30 start time…
Yesterday, I met with Principal Ronnie Bell and his staff at Bailey Gatzert Elementary School. We discussed the potential impacts of a change to their start time from 7:55am to 9:30am. They showed me a printed list of their students with an attendance rate of less than 80%. 52 out of 310 students have an attendance rate of less than 80%. These students are also regularly tardy, late to school. The staff calls each of these students every day, urging them to come to school and to come on time. Why do they do this work? Because they know that if the child is not at school, there is no learning. For these students, it takes this kind of effort to get them to school. A 9:30am start time would mean many of these students would show up as late as 11am. They also expressed concern that with the 3rd tier, any bus delays during tier 1 and tier 2 would snowball into significant delays for them. They asked if they could have a 7:30am start time instead.
I use this example to highlight that while the Operations team has done an incredible job of assigning schools to start times to drive efficiency in routing, more work remains. We must engage directly with principals to understand the impact of changing bell times on their school communities. I am specifically concerned that we have incomplete engagement with principals at our “13 Priority Schools.”
May Be a Non Issue and or an Imperfect Solution
Seeing that many of the currently suspended routes are in District 4, my director district, I contacted my principals. At this point, with combined creative problem solving by the transportation team, principals, and fellow familles, impacted families have found alternate transportation. While I make this point, I do not want to diminish the inconveniences and burdens of impacted families and would like to hear from them directly. You can email me at vsmaritz@seattleschools.org.
I am a board member of the Denise Louie Education Center, a nonprofit child care provider that serves many Seattle Public Schools families. I have also been in touch with the Greater Seattle Child Care Coalition, whose membership includes all the child care providers with sites in our schools as well as providers who have off site locations and serve SPS students.
I want to thank Ashley Davies and James Bush from the District who have been actively engaging this coalition. There is recognition that this change will complicate child care needs, and complicate them further after 2 years of pandemic related challenges for them and for families.
In my conversations with staff at Denise Louie, I have a good understanding of how inconsistent bus service impacts our most vulnerable students. Denise Louie serves our developmental preschool students, for example, who are relying on bus transportation to get the additional services they need. This is a problem that must be solved. Proposed bell time changes, however, would create new problems, including exacerbating labor shortages in the child care industry.
I polled child care centers and found:
80 more child care positions needed with Bell Time changes, plus 20+ cafeteria positions to fill versus 70 less bus drivers. I firmly believe we are trading labor shortage issues.
What I Propose Instead
I propose we continue to suspend routes and actively recruit bus drivers for 1 year. We should also spend this 1 year fully analyzing a set of creative solutions and potential impacts.
Some solutions suggested by community, myself, and fellow directors include:
These ideas have not been fully explored. I know the District knows about the possible solutions; several of them have been previously presented at a March 2021 budget worksession.
Before we take the drastic step of altering our Bell Times, I believe we need to wait to see how our driver shortage resolves itself and make sure we are looking at all possible alternatives, and all possible alternatives in combination with each other.
There is no silver bullet for our transportation challenges, and 3 Bell Times is no silver bullet either.
About School Transportation Funding
The 3 Bell Time proposal does not simply address our bus driver shortage, it is also a source of cost savings. Our transportation program runs at a deficit. My suggested solution to this deficit, while not an immediate solution, is to engage our state legislators in fixing bus transportation funding.
Washington State has a complicated formula (STARS) for reimbursing districts for bus transportation. Our transportation costs generally exceed state reimbursement, mainly because the reimbursement is for previous year’s expenditures. Expenditures typically increase over time. Factors such as rising gas prices, increased enrollment, etc. all contribute to rising bus expenditures.
Why should the State update the STARS formula?
I look forward to collaborating with community members, SPS, other school districts, WSSDA, and with Director Rankin, our legislative liaison, in engaging our state legislature in addressing a broken formula for paying for necessary bus transportation for Washington state’s students.