Randall School could bus some open enrollment students as a way to encourage more students to choose to come to the school.
Steve Bloom, district administrator, said he recently learned from a state expert on open enrollment that a district can bus some — but not all — open enrollment students.
Open enrollment is a Wisconsin program that allows students from one school district in which they reside to apply to attend school in another school district. With its small geographic area school districts, Western Kenosha County is a particularly apt area for open enrollment. If a district increases its enrollment through open enrollment, it receives more state aid. Some local school districts are increasing actively working to encourage open enrollment.
Randall currently has a policy of not busing any open enrollment students. However, Bloom said surveying shows many people would be more inclined to pursue open enrollment if transportation was available.
Randall does have situations where open enrollment students live very close to resident students, Bloom said. Those might be the situations that make the most sense to provide transportation.
In the past there has been some board concern about how to handle open enrollment students that the district is transporting but might have no adult at home on occasion. The district could establish a procedure that would have a open enrollment student brought back to school in such situations for a set number of instances before losing transportation privileges, Bloom said.
The board did not give Bloom a clear direction of whether to pursue the change, but at least one board member acknowledged the difficulties of a some but not all policy.
“Tricky,” said board member Jim O’Connell, “especially offering to some but not others.”
Randall has already reduced the number of bus routes this year. Our bus currently has kids sitting 3-to-a-seat for a 45 minute bus ride to get 5 miles from the school. Bus drivers seem to be having discipline problems with the amount of students they already have.
Why should we add more students to overcrowded buses, make the ride even longer, and add more chaos?
This doesn’t even begin to address the effects on the classrooms and teachers.
Is it really worth the extra money that open enrollment might bring in?
Does Randall really need more students? There are already 3-4 classes for each elementary grade. Last year they were talking about teacher cuts and now they are looking for more students? Sounds to me like the District Administrator needs to figure out what he really wants to do….more kids = more teachers, more buses and more bus drivers.