SPECIAL REPORT
SHARED SERVICES Student transporters do their part to drive more money into classrooms
School buses line up at the largest high school in Oklahoma. Nearly 4,000 students attend this campus within Broken Arrow Public Schools. Fifty buses service the school and all leave within 7 minutes of the last bell.
Written By Debbie Curtis O
ne definition of sharing is to be unselfish and think of others first or it can mean using something jointly with others. Perhaps both definitions apply when describing shared
services to provide more effective, efficient transporta- tion services. The principle of economies of scale might also apply, especially when thinking back many years ago, to when children in rural areas walked to a one-room school- house. School buses and consolidation of those many schools greatly expanded learning opportunities while also reducing educational costs per student. Schools are under more intense pressure than ever
before to reduce costs, while offering ever-increasing services to students and trying to maintain a balanced budget. Some rural districts have merged into one larger district. In other places, schools have collaborated and combined payroll, food services, information technology, or human resources into one department serving multi- ple districts. Combining these non-instructional services not only adds buying power through bulk purchases but serves many districts with fewer staff, which makes more sense than each district having its own offices.
New York BOCES Systems Since 1948, when the New York State legislature developed Boards of Cooperative Educational Services
16 School Transportation News • JUNE 2022
(BOCES), students across the state have been learning ca- reer skills in many areas, from animal science to welding. BOCES students from surrounding districts are bused in for morning or afternoon programs and the rest of the day is spent in classes at their regular school. But that isn’t all. The 37 BOCES schools now in operation statewide also provide municipalities and school districts with cost effective services, including adult education, exception- al children’s services, centralized payroll departments, commercial driver training, and in some cases central- ized maintenance operations for buses. The BOCES staff focuses on improving pupil performance by paying attention to their local district’s initiatives. In Ithaca, New York, the Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES educates students from three counties. Shared services include coordination of the automatic substi- tute teacher program, tax collection, printing services, and employee benefits, to name just a few. The BOCES also helps surrounding districts train bus drivers. “I’m happy that trades and other skilled professions
that don’t require a college education are in vogue again,” said Jeffrey Matteson, district superintendent and chief operating officer. “Our transportation specialist, Donna Boyce, works closely with districts, even outside our area, on training, and she is a real advocate for trans- portation. She’s continued to build the driver education program, going above and beyond what we expected.
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