Cheshire School District presents five bus-and-start-time proposals as Barnum opens and Chapman closes

District staff presented five start-time and bus-routing proposals for the 2026–27 school year at a Cheshire School District planning meeting, laying out cost, bus-run and program tradeoffs as the district prepares to open Barnum, reconfigure Norton and decommission Chapman.

The proposals range from a plan that preserves the current three-tier order but would add about $360,000 annually in contract bus costs, to two-tier models that could increase bus-contract costs by roughly $730,000–$950,000 depending on how many maximum runs are required. One option that shifts Cheshire High School to a later start (08:15) was shown as the only proposal that produced a modest $73,000 savings in the district’s conservative estimate.

District staff said the redistricting/enrollment study must be complete before final fiscal impacts can be calculated. Emily (Transportation staff) told the board the projections use a flat assumption of $408 per Type 1 bus per day and that current baseline runs use about 36 buses; some proposals would raise the peak-of-tier requirement to as many as 49 buses. "If we can nail down the start times for the schools, then we can start to think about staffing," Emily said, noting teacher scheduling, childcare needs and athletics are all affected.

Why this matters: the chosen configuration affects recurring transportation…