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Anchor Bay superintendent: new routes largely on time amid construction; tweaks planned
Summary
Superintendent Tim Jankowski told the board Aug. 27 that first-day arrival times for most buses met targets despite road construction; administration will monitor routes and adjust after construction wraps in mid-September.
Superintendent Tim Jankowski gave the board an operational update on busing at the Aug. 27 Anchor Bay Board of Education meeting, telling members that most routes on the first day of school arrived earlier than expected despite ongoing roadway construction.
Jankowski said district planners considered number of available drivers, distance to schools, ridership counts, stop density and route hazards when designing new routes. He said some consolidated routes are actually shorter than last year’s routes because higher ridership at fewer stops can improve efficiency. On the first day of school, the district aimed for many routes to deliver students by about 7:40 a.m.; Jankowski said many buses arrived between 7:32 and 7:33 a.m., with only two routes running late.
Ongoing state construction on a corridor the administration called “23 mile” is expected to continue through Sept. 15 and will likely make times worse before they improve. Jankowski said the district will not make permanent route adjustments until construction finishes, but staff are monitoring camera feeds and on‑the‑ground timing data and making day-to-day temporary changes to cope with missed turns, driver acclimation and higher-than-normal parent drop-offs on opening day.
Board members asked whether separating buses by school (dedicated fleets for North and South) had been costed. Jankowski said separate fleets would likely require about one-third more drivers for middle‑school coverage and estimated that the marginal cost would be roughly one-third of the middle-school busing budget; he said the district will provide a more detailed cost analysis if the board wants to pursue that option.
Why it matters: Timely, safe student transportation affects start-of-day times, after-school programs and family schedules. The board asked administration to delay permanent route changes until construction wraps and to return if it wants to pursue a separate-fleet model for additional cost study.
Selected quote - “Most of the buses made it there by 7:32; the next series were 7:33,” Jankowski said about first‑day arrivals.
Ending: Administration will monitor routes daily, collect ridership census data and return with proposals after the construction is finished or sooner if the board asks for a separate-fleet financial analysis.
