In 2010, the 51,000-student considered cutting busing of high school students as a money-saving measure, just as most of the other large districts in the state had done.
But the state鈥檚 biggest district managed to come up with a creative solution: Instead of doing away with busing for older students altogether, Columbus eliminated most neighborhood bus stops and used neighborhood schools as centralized stops for older students. The change cut the number of high school bus stops from nearly 1,500 to 230 and pared about $2 million from the district鈥檚 $50 million-a-year transportation budget.
鈥淒oing away with the service is doing a disservice to our students,鈥� says Steve A. Simmons III, who came up with the idea. The director of transportation for the past six years, Simmons, 56, has spent 30 years with the district, where he started as a bus mechanic and worked his way up.
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His longevity gives him a certain amount of leeway with the school board, he says鈥攖hough he jokes that he is a 鈥渓oudmouth.鈥�
鈥淚鈥檓 very vocal,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ecause I鈥檝e come up through the system.鈥�
John Stanford, the deputy superintendent in charge of operations, lauds Simmons鈥� creativity in managing district money. 鈥淗e鈥檚 constantly reviewing the industry for best-practice ideas and consulting with his colleagues,鈥� Stanford says.
Getting students to school is a distinct challenge in Ohio鈥檚 capital city. The district has no set feeder patterns, because students can enroll in any school that has space for them as part of an intradistrict-choice program. State law requires the district to provide bus transportation to charter and private school students in kindergarten through 8th grade who live within district boundaries but more than two miles from their schools of choice. That means some of the bus routes serve schools outside the city.
Transporting more than 30,000 students daily, the school district maintains 750 routes and can end up making more than 200 modifications a day, as students enter, leave, or move within the district, Simmons says.
Keeping Track
Columbus has implemented some innovative programs under Simmons鈥� watch: For example, a global-positioning tracking system, installed in January 2008, allows the district to monitor every vehicle in its fleet. Zonar Systems, the Seattle-based provider of the technology, says the system offers benefits such as a wireless device that drivers can use for their pre- and post-trip inspection reports and a monitoring system school principals can use to track bus arrivals. The district was an early adopter of the technology, Simmons says.
This school year, the district has expanded its technology use through a student tracking tag that goes on students鈥� backpacks. The credit-card-size tag, called ZPass, is read by a device inside the bus and can keep track of when students board and exit.
Using the device, 鈥渨e鈥檒l be able to look up and see that little Stevie鈥檚 on bus 255, but he hasn鈥檛 gotten off yet,鈥� Simmons says.
Faced with static or shrinking resources, Simmons sometimes has to make unpopular choices, like doing away with 鈥渃ourtesy stops鈥� that picked up children who technically lived within a two-mile radius of their schools. The new routes may be more efficient, he says, 鈥渂ut that means the bus doesn鈥檛 go by some houses anymore. The parents don鈥檛 necessarily want to hear that.鈥�
Simmons, who is the current president of the , suggests that transportation directors could help each other with difficult issues if they worked together. Professionally, he鈥檚 expanded his reach beyond the district, serving as a board member of the in Albany, N.Y., and the chairman of the Columbus Transportation and Pedestrian Commission, which reviews transit proposals before they go to the city council.
鈥淚f you need help, you need to call your peers,鈥� Simmons says. 鈥淧eople try to fix problems themselves, when there鈥檚 probably a thousand people who have fixed it before.鈥�
