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“But those are costs we incur and that we review on a regular basis to see if there is any opportunity to do something different, but that doesn’t seem to be the case right now.”

Board chair Joy Bowen-Eyre, who will not be seeking re-election as a school trustee this fall, added the board looks forward to continuing to work with the province to try to meet parent expectations for transportation.

“In Calgary, parents and educators have very high expectations,” she said. “We want excellent, high-quality public education and parents are really busy. They’re facing lots of restraints, and if they can have better busing, then they would like to have that.”

Eggen ordered a financial review of the CBE this spring after a series of changes to busing was announced, including more congregated stops farther from schools, changes to bell times and putting more middle school students in alternative programs onto Calgary Transit at a cost of $700 a year to parents.

Officials from the CBE at the time said a big part of their challenge was the province’s introduction of Bill 1, which eliminates instructional fees and transportation fees for kids in regular programs who live farther than 2.4 kilometres from their designated schools.

But Eggen reiterated yet again Thursday that the province has given the CBE $18 million to offset fee reduction, part of the total $1.3 billion in funding the board receives overall.

“Part of my frustration is the mixing up of transportation issues with our efforts to reduce school fees,” Eggen said.

“I know we’re in a politically heated fall, with municipal and trustee elections, but mixing up a very noble and necessary initiative and somehow making suggestions that the bill was causing transportation chaos … it just simply isn’t true.”

Eggen expects to announce specific recommendations to the board’s transportation challenges by Thanksgiving, he confirmed.

But he also hopes to continue the review and compare best practices of the three other large metro boards across the province.

eferguson@postmedia.com