A committee studying hazardous bus routes in the Jordan district told the school board 43 routes were dangerous enough to warrant special busing. That's six more routes than the board approved last year.
The cost of the busing was estimated at $484,402. The district receives no reimbursement from the state for busing due to a hazardous route.Ten of the routes have buses that travel through the area and have space available to handle the extra passengers. The district will have to do some "magic" to organize the routes to handle the need, said the district's transportation director, Ron Sing.
"We have enough buses that we are able to manipulate into the different areas," he said. Silver Mesa Elementary is a good example, he said.
The bus that will pick up the children on the hazardous route near Silver Mesa will be coming from Union Middle School. The empty bus will load the Silver Mesa children and drop them off, and have about 15 minutes to pick up the children going to Granite Elementary, he said.
That means if it snows heavily or if there's a traffic jam, we'll be behind, Sing said. "We've got it so precise that we really don't have any time to spare."
Only one route was dropped near Oakdale Elementary because construction that made it dangerous for students is finished. Hazardous routes are submitted to the committee by school principals. Eleven routes that were submitted weren't approved.
The district took the committee report under advisement and will vote on whether to accept the committee's recommendations at the next board meeting.