No bus on last day for some CV kindergartners
No bus service will be provided for morning and afternoon kindergarten students in the Central Valley School District on the last day of school this year.
The school board voted unanimously at its regular meeting Monday to eliminate transportation for half-day kindergarten students on June 15. Parents will be required to pick up and drop off their children that day.
However, transportation to and from school will be provided for students attending all-day kindergarten.
The last day of school is shortened for all students in most area school districts. Kindergartners who attend either morning or afternoon sessions would be in school for only about an hour on the last day, district officials said.
“It’s kind of a day that isn’t required,” Superintendent Mike Pearson said. “There will be no penalty for missing the last day.”
To provide bus service on that day for morning and afternoon kindergarten students, the district would have had to hire substitute bus drivers.
That includes about 230 kindergartners who attend the Central Valley Kindergarten Center at Mission and Barker. The district opened the center last fall to ease crowding at Greenacres and Liberty Lake elementary schools.
Some kindergarten students have been bused away from their home schools to other neighborhood schools this year, and about 100 overflow students in other grades also have been bused to other schools for space reasons.
“That added a level of complexity to transportation that they didn’t have last year,” said Melanie Rose, district spokeswoman.
A safety issue also arose regarding the transportation of kindergarten students, Rose said.
“It is pretty widely known and followed, especially with kindergarten, that the safest way to transport them is with consistency,” she said. “On the last day of school, they would have had different drivers and different hours.”
In other business, the board approved an increase in fees for school breakfasts and lunches.
Beginning next year, elementary students will pay $2 for lunch, up from $1.85 this year. Middle- and high-school students will pay $2.50 for lunch, up from $2.25.
The cost of breakfast for all students will increase from $1 to $1.25, and milk will cost 50 cents.
Adults will pay $3.50 for lunch at any district school.
The increased prices will help make up a gap in the operating budget for school lunches.
During the 2005-06 school year, the district received $3.2 million from the federal lunch and breakfast programs but spent $3.9 million, including labor.