SUTTONS BAY -- A Leelanau County school district is in preliminary talks with a local transit service to coordinate busing for students.
Mike Murray, superintendent of Suttons Bay Public Schools, contacted the Bay Area Transportation Authority about starting a partnership that would allow the district to divert $600,000 spent on busing to avoid teacher lay-offs.
Murray and BATA Executive Director Tom Menzel have met once to discuss the idea. The arrangement could start next year.
Schools statewide are bracing for the possibility of a $127 per-student funding cut this month, after a previous $165 per-student reduction this school year.
Administrators need to be creative to deal with it, Murray said.
"We have to keep adjusting our operation midyear," he said. "With the series of cuts coming down from the state in our funding, we have to look at all of our options."
The $600,000 transportation budget is about 7 percent of overall expenses, Murray said, and the equivalent of eight teachers.
The 65-square-mile district will scale back to seven buses next week, with as many as 400 of its 884 students aboard. He said ridership varies by the time of day and by season.
Eliminating transportation spending could prevent the layoffs of Suttons Bay teachers, Murray said. The district has grappled with cutting employees in each of the last two school years.
No bus drivers would lose their jobs under the preliminary plan, Murray and Menzel said. Ideally, BATA would absorb them.
"This could create a much more viable option for the people in our district," Murray said. "This is the type of interagency cooperation that we're looking for."
State law does not prohibit districts from contracting with transit agencies.
But public buses aren't required to install the same overhead light systems used on yellow school buses, said Ken Micklash, a pupil transportation consultant with the Michigan Department of Education.
In some cases, transit systems don't pick up or drop off students at their homes, Micklash said, but specific services would be negotiated.
In theory, BATA would take over Suttons Bay's school buses, paint them to BATA specifications and set up routes, Menzel said. Students likely would be charged a reduced fare to offset the additional operating costs.
Murray said the district would continue to transport special education students as required by law.
BATA administrators are negotiating with unionized drivers to create a flexible structure before any partnership can begin, Menzel said. To be cost-effective, the agency will need to find a way to keep Leelanau County buses from sitting idle when students are in class.
"We would see how we could take their assets and merge them into ours," he said. "It's a small school district, and we could develop a model that we could emulate and grow in other districts."
