How long should elementary students ride school buses? Bill to allow 2½ hours each day

Elementary students could ride a school bus for 2½ hours each day if proposed legislation passes the Iowa Legislature.

Senate File 2137 would allow school districts to lengthen school bus routes and increase the time elementary students ride from 60 to 75 minutes each way.

In addition, school board members could extend the time beyond 75 minutes — there's no limit in the bill — as long as they issue notice and hold public hearings.

The measure is out of committee and eligible for debate in the Senate, having gained traction this week.

State Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, said the legislation will put control back in the hands of local school districts.

It's important for school boards to have flexibility in balancing their budget and making judgment calls on decisions such as ride times, he said.

Some districts have elementary and high schools on the same campus but are hamstrung by the current time limits, Rozenboom said. State law limits ride time for elementary students to 60 minutes, and for high school students to 75 minutes.

Greene County Schools, which serves more than 1,100 students in Central Iowa about 60 miles northwest of Des Moines, estimates it could eliminate two bus routes and save $100,000 a year, according to a fiscal note on the proposal.

Potentially, the district could direct that money back into the classroom — if elementary and high school students both could ride the bus for 75 minutes, he said.

"When you're trying to sort out bus routes for your school, everyone can be a bit more efficient with their busing than they are now," Rozenboom said.

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Rozenboom disputed the notion that bus routes would go even longer. Hypothetically, the bill would allow students to spend 3 hours or more on the bus each day as school boards would have the authority to extend ride times even longer.

"All of a sudden we're going to have unlimited time? No, that's not the idea," he said. "It's to allow local school boards to use some discretion and balance the budget in a responsible way."

Rozenboom said that the public hearing and notice process outlined in the bill creates safeguards for parents. "They can't do this in a closed room," Rozenboom said.

The bill is seen as a way to grant districts, especially those with large geographic areas, flexibility in busing students to and from school, potentially changing routes to save money. But for some districts, it's not clear how much impact it would have.

The Western Dubuque Community School District covers the largest area in the state, for example, transporting about 2,500 students across a swath of 550 miles each day.

► DATABASE: Search your district's transportation routes and costs here.

School leaders have already trimmed expenses where they could, lowering the number of bus routes over the years from 55 to about 37 routes.

"We have streamlined our system to the point that adding an additional 15 minutes to our routes probably won't help us out a great deal," superintendent Rick Colpitts said.

He added: "It does give us some flexibility that we don't currently have, but it would not have a huge impact on our routes and system."