BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – Buffalo Public Schools cannot guarantee transportation this fall for all students who need a bus and attend a non-public school.
Despite Superintendent Kriner Cash’s comments during the reopening news conference last week that the district has an obligation to provide transportation for students who attend a private school or Catholic school, one of the lawyers representing Buffalo Public Schools said the district does not have the legal obligation to do so because their students are learning remotely for the first few weeks.
However, the district is still considering providing a bus for students at the various private schools in the area.
Kuzma said the district does not want to get into a “tit for tat legal battle” and is working to obtain plans from private schools on their educational model and to find out which days they will need transportation.
The district is concerned they may not have the resources such as buses and bus drivers to transport students who attend a private school. More buses and drivers will be needed because of the various social distancing guidelines and limits on the number of students on a bus. Kuzma said there is one charter school that normally uses up to 11 buses for transportation.
“If we do it under a hybrid model under social distancing, we need about five times that amount just to accommodate transportation just for that one school,” Kuzma said. “It’s important right now that we get those plans from those institutions and we put it up on the big board and model it and make a good-faith effort to accommodate the transportation needs of those students.”
The hybrid model of learning also may force the district to prioritize who will go onto buses. Kuzma said the district will not have enough vehicles to transport both district students and students who attend private schools.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Kuzma said. “There will have to be changes at that point in the way the district services the charters and non-public school students in terms of timing and in terms of their own plans. We’ll have to do the best as we possibly can, alignment when possible, so we can transport all of the students that need transportation to the extent we can.”
Kuzma said the district will be able to accommodate all students at Buffalo Public Schools in a hybrid model. He said it will be a “tremendously humongous lift” to get both sets of students to school.
Charter schools like Reach Academy Charter Schools are confident they will have buses available for their students from Kindergarten to third grade, though Linda Marszalek, co-founder at Reach Academy, shares a long-term concern about the impact a hybrid model will have on transportation.