BY SAM MAILEY
[email protected]
Feb. 23 Roseville Joint Union High School District board meeting approved the reduction of bus fares starting in the 2016-2017 school year.
Annual bus pass prices will be dropping from $225 to $50, the first price variation in over five years.
The reduction was proposed to compensate for families who were concerned about the early arrival times for buses in northwest Roseville.
“One of the ideas that came up, I’m not sure who came up with it or when it came up, but we talked to district admin about how it would probably be a good benefit to the community to lessen that fee,” assistant superintendent of business services Joe Landon said.
After the reduction, Landon estimates the fee revenue will drop from approximately $100,000 to $25,000, which gets compiled into the annual operations budget allocations.
“We don’t generate that much money from that two twenty-five as far as running the transportation, it’s still a really small percentage of the money it costs to run transportation,” Landon said.
RJUHSD receives annual payments from the Roseville City School District for providing their schools with transportation, which also generates more money than the fees. According to Landon, RCSD provided over $1,000,000 last year.
According to junior Austin Collins, the current bus fees could pose financial burdens on students and their families, especially for the financially struggling.
“It should be a similar program to the free lunches where you get a free bus pass to help them out in those times,” Collins said.
For parents like Rena Bonesio, who has one Roseville High School student and two incoming freshmen, an annual bus pass for all three children would cost $675. With the reduction, the combined cost of three students’ bus passes, $150. According to Bonesio, this drop makes bus transportation a more considerable option.
“Four-hundred fifty bucks would be a really huge chunk to put out, a hundred dollars would be be much more reasonable,” Bonesio said. “In fact we’ll probably consider doing the annual pass instead of tickets.”
