SARATOGA SPRINGS— More than a dozen parents spoke at a recent Saratoga Springs School District Board of Education meeting in opposition to proposed changes to the district’s busing schedules.
The changes, which received significant pushback from board members at last month’s meeting, would, among other things, switch the high school’s start time to 7:30 a.m. and push back four elementary schools’ start times to 9:50 a.m.
The new start times would be the result of transitioning the district from a two-tiered busing system to a three-tiered one. Doing so, suggested the results of a six-month study commissioned by the district, would help ease problems caused by the ongoing bus driver shortage.
Parents at the January 9 board meeting cited lack of available childcare, work schedules, earlier start times for teenagers, and young children arriving home in the dark as reasons to oppose altering the district’s schedules.
“It boggles my mind that this is our only best solution,” said Ana Ventre, a Saratoga resident and middle school teacher at Broadalbin-Perth.
“Schools do not exist in isolation and neither does a single school problem,” said Erin Leary, president of the Lake Avenue Elementary PTA. “I know that everyone here and working at the district does know that, but [the proposed scheduling changes] certainly didn’t suggest that.”
Leah Grady, a Spanish teacher at Queensbury High School, said that teaching sleep-deprived teenagers at 7:30 a.m. is an “ugly” experience, with students behaving as if they are “one step up from zombies.” Pushing back high school start times, Grady said, could be “life changing” for tired adolescents.
Maddy Zanetti, the co-owner of Impressions of Saratoga and The Dark Horse Mercantile, said she would struggle to staff her businesses if employees who are parents needed to pick up their kids in the early afternoon or drop off their kids late in the morning.
When the scheduling changes were first proposed at a December 12 Education Board meeting, Saratoga Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Patton called them a “starting point” for conversations with the community. “This is one solution,” Patton said. “There may be other solutions out there that we haven’t even explored yet.”
Patton again emphasized at the January 9 meeting that no schedule changes had been decided upon, nor would they happen any time soon (if indeed they happen at all).
The district has been contending with logistical challenges in its transportation department for several years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the district had 85 drivers. It now has 69 drivers who are tasked with covering 71 routes across 112 square miles. The district has been engaged in driver recruitment efforts, but “even with those efforts in place, driver shortages continue to be a problem,” Patton said last month.
Bus driver shortages have been occurring across the country, as well. Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that from September 2019 to September 2023, there was a 15.1% decrease in the total number of K-12 bus drivers nationwide.
The ongoing driver shortage in the Saratoga Springs School District has resulted in several bus route cancellations, including one instance in November when buses 461 and 466 were both canceled, along with all after school late buses.
