By MARY SWIFT
staff writer

CLE ELUM — For a long time the Cle Elum-Roslyn School District Board of Directors has looked for ways to “engage” the community.
Monday night, it found one: talk about shortening school bus routes.
More than 25 people attended the board’s regular meeting at Walter Strom Middle School. A number were community members who had questions about the proposed route changes.
Business Manager Brian Twardoski told the parents it comes down to trying contain skyrocketing fuel costs for bus transportation.
In the 2006-2007 school year, the district spent $44,000 on diesel, he said. Last year it spent nearly $60,000.
“Where the story gets quite grim is where we project out over the next 12 months,” he said, noting that experts recommend anticipating a cost of $6.50 to $7 a gallon.
Going with the lower figure, “we need to budget $90,000 for this year,” he said. That figure represents a doubling of costs from two years ago. (That figure doesn’t reflect the cost of transporting athletic teams to events. In effect, the district “rents” buses for athletic and other trips and that money comes out of a different budget.)
The only good news, he said, is that the district isn’t alone.
“Everybody is feeling the pinch,” he said.
For $6.50 per gallon, a bus gets six miles, he said.
“It’s simple math. We’re spending a dollar for every mile we travel.”
Besides “trimming” some routes where the buses have been going long distances to pick up only one or two students, the district also is considering other ways of addressing the challenge, he said.
Among them:
— “Some districts are buying fuel through the Department of Transportation (which has a high volume of buying and so gets a better price) so we’re looking in to that,” he said.
— The district also is hoping to encourage parents who normally drop their children at school to have them ride the bus, at least during “ride week”, the week the district counts the number of students using district transportation and that figure helps determine how much money the district gets for transportation. This year’s “ride week” is Sept. 22 to 26.
— The district is also considering leaving buses on campus during the day. The issue is how to transport bus drivers back and forth to their own cars at the bus barn.
One of the challenges rural districts like Cle Elum-Roslyn face is the way the state figures distance, said Greg Barr, the district’s transportation supervisor.
By example, a route that serves the Teanaway goes 17 miles one way, he said. But for the state’s purposes, route distance is computed “as the crow flies.” So the figure the state uses is six and a half miles one way.
One audience member questioned whether the district had considered going to four-day weeks. Superintendent Mark Flatau said that while a few rural districts in some areas of the country had taken that step, he had concerns about the impact of an extended day on student learning.
In the end, the board agreed to trim routes in the Teanaway, Liberty, Upper and Lower Peoh Point and Hundley Road areas.
Of three changes proposed for the Peoh Point area, the board did not agree to one.
Parent Lisa Erie, who lives in the area, had voiced strong opposition to the change, saying vehicles using Upper Peoh Point Road often exceeded the posted 35 mile per hour speed limit, her children would have to walk a long distance if the route were changed as proposed and she feared for their safety.
“We are in the school district. Therefore the district should provide transportation for our children. I’m a working parent. I work on the West Side,” she said.
But a man living in a remote area of the Teanaway said he would be glad to transport his son to a bus stop if the route is shortened.
Another community member, John Thomas, told the board he was upset the district was in the position it was in.
“This here to me should be taken to the state and federal government,” he said. “If we can bail out a bunch of crooked banks, we should be able to help the school district.”
Information on the district’s school bus routes and changes to those routes will be available later this week at the district’s Web site, www.cleelum.wednet.edu.