The Dunkirk City School District’s transportation manager cleared up some misconceptions about busing of city students recently.

Tim Abbey spoke at a Dunkirk Board of Education meeting last week. He said the district buses 827 students, “a pretty good average for us. That’s not an alarming number. Out of our around 2,000 kids, we bus 827 total, going all over.”

Bus services are 100% contracted, with First Student as primary contractor. Two other contractors, WNY Busing and Transpo Bus, Inc. are secondary contractors. Abbey said the district will also pay mileage to parents who transport their students to locations not served by busing.

The district provides transport to 20 locations, with about half the sites exclusively for special education students.

Dunkirk has traditionally only transported students who were assigned outside of their neighborhood school, have medical notes from doctors, or have extenuating circumstances. Abbey said the setup is related to state aid, which funds about 90% of district busing.

He said, “I’ve probably had that question asked to me a hundred times since I’ve been the transportation director, ‘Why don’t we bus everybody?’ Because it’s very expensive, very expensive. And there’s a catch to it — you can elect to bus everybody, and some districts do. But we get 90% on aid the way we do it. Once you start to bus kids that aren’t eligible in meeting the state metrics, now you have to start deducting aid, and it adds up really quickly.”

Abbey said the state will not fund buses for students between grades kindergarten and eight who have to walk less than two miles to school, or three miles for ninth- through 12th-graders.

“Some of our busing is at max capacity, particularly at the intermediate school,” Abbey said. The district transports 260 intermediate schoolers on four buses, or 65 children per bus.

Abbey is planning a system-wide transportation study, with a review of current busing eligibility requirements. The study will also investigate adding to the Dunkirk school district’s two drug-free “safe zones,” which could allow it to get more state aid for busing.

Toward the end of his presentation, Abbey noted that cameras are now on all school buses. They do audio and video recording at all times. Abbey said the cameras are not live; rather, video is downloaded at the bus terminal.

Dunkirk’s buses also have GPS tracking on them now, with Abbey stating it helps district officials update concerned parents on the location of a particular vehicle. Parents will also be able to track buses on an app to be made available this fall.

Abbey concluded by mentioning a shortage of bus drivers, stating that the district has had to do three “double runs” this school year. Those involve a single driver picking up two bus routes — and since one driver can’t be on two routes at the same time, the kids on the second bus wind up an hour late.

Abbey all but acted as a recruiter for First Student, putting in a plug for its salary structure and sign-on bonus.