By Rebecca Taggart
Plans for a transportation partnership between Ottawa’s school boards are driving ahead with the submission of a proposed operating agreement to the Ministry of Education.
The submission details the progress made by both boards to create a new transport authority and share its management. It will also recommend one route planning system and one student database to ensure the partnership is efficient.
But officials from both school boards remain divided over whether the project will meet its expected launch date of September 2008.
Lynn Scott, vice-chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, says while she is optimistic that the partnership will begin on time, it will take some time to sort out the details.
“These things don’t just happen overnight,” says Scott.
A joint-board committee meeting has resulted in an operating agreement that was submitted to the ministry on Feb. 14.
As part of the proposal, the committee has agreed to call the new system the “Ottawa Student Transportation Authority.”
If the ministry approves the operating agreement, the next step will be to hire a general manager to oversee the partnership. Staff working on the project will also be relocated to a central location where they can work together rather than from their separate school boards.
The idea for a partnership emerged last November, when officials from both school boards began discussing options for a new transportation system for the nearly 60,000 students who take the bus to school every day.
In January, a joint-board committee was established. It is composed of the director of education, the financial director and two trustees from each board. All decisions relating to the project have to be ratified by each board before any progress can be made.
David Leach, superintendent of finance and administration for the Catholic school board, says he has been working closely with his colleagues at both boards on the proposal to the ministry.
While the ministry has laid out basic guidelines that the partnership must meet, Leach says the boards are allowed some freedom to address their own priorities.
He adds that the partnership may not necessarily mean that the public and Catholic school boards will group their students together on one bus.
He says both boards have done a good job so far addressing transportation issues. Staggered school start times and double or triple bus runs will still allow each board to transport their students separately.
The partnership will most likely be applied in rural areas, says Leach, where combined bus routes will diminish the costs of providing transportation in large regions with small populations.
Rob Campbell, chair of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, thinks a September deadline is too ambitious for such a massive project. He says that while both boards seem committed to working together, they will inevitably bring their own agendas to the table.
For Campbell, the need for a partnership illustrates the funding problems that have plagued both boards for years. He says the public board receives $7 million less than the Catholic board, and as a consequence, bus services for public high school students were eliminated in 1998.
Campbell says the partnership would limit a board’s control because an independent management would not be accountable to either board.
The need for a partnership is not an indication of either school board’s mismanagement of funding, says Campbell. “It’s a systematic issue of under funding and the province needs to step up to the plate,” he says.
“Regardless of funding, we insist that our kids get from point A to point B,” he says.