SMALL ILLINOIS DISTRICTS SAVING BIG BUCKS BY COMBINING STUDENT TRANSPORTATION
IN
a move that is gaining credibility as a cost-effective alternative to private contractors, three small
Illinois school districts have combined their student transportation operations in a collective effort that is estimated to save the community a total of $600,000 the first year, according to district officials. The Saratoga Elementary School Dis- trict, the Morris Elementary School District 54 and Morris Community High School District 101 have merged to form Morris Community Schools, a service arm of the three districts that will handle all transpor- tation needs. The school districts remain independent and only share transporta- tion costs. The plan mirrors one undertaken by five school districts in 1988 when they formed the Southwest Transportation Agency, which now serves 13 school districts in Fresno County, Calif. The architects of the Morris plan are
Saratoga Superintendent Kathy Perry and former Saratoga bus driver Vicki Valentine, who is now the transportation dispatcher for Morris County Schools, a new position. Perry, who worked as a business manager
for Morris Elementary and a bookkeeper for Saratoga Elementary before becoming su- perintendent, said all the elementary schools feed into the high school. She realized the districts were paying two different contrac- tors to take students to the same facilities. “Contractors are in business to make
money and they were benefiting from the fact that the schools were not working together,” Perry said. “When I brought that to everyone’s attention, the decision was made to transport the kids ourselves.” Valentine said the decision was made a little easier because of the savings reaped from a decision in 2002 to combine the transportation of special education stu- dents. Quoting Perry’s estimates, Valentine said since 2002, combining special educa- tion transportation had saved the districts $4.7 million. “We already had a shared services
agreement,” Valentine said. “So this year we decided to combine all student transportation.” Saratoga Elementary provides the
transportation because they have the ex- perience, buses and drivers. Saratoga will
invoice the other districts for their share. The buses are on five-year leases with bumper-to-bumper warranties so mainte- nance costs are at a minimum. Staggering some routes and doubling others realize more savings. District estimates are that first-year
savings from transporting regular educa- tion students would be from $300,000 to $400,000, and from $400,000 to $500,000 for special education students.
Perry said that in a community of 12,000, that’s a lot of money. “I feel badly that we did this inde- pendently for so long,” Perry said. “This could be happening to other school dis- tricts. If there is more than one school dis- trict in a community, they need to work to- gether. We did our due diligence and this is working the way we thought it would. We proved to ourselves that by working together we could do a lot better.”
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