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BARRHEAD – Parents in Pembina Hills School Division utilizing in-town busing, transportation to a school other than their children’s designated school or alternate pick-up/drop-off sites can expect to pay the same amount for these services in the 2022-2023 school year as they did for the 2021-2022 school year.
At the recommendation of administration, trustees opted during their Feb. 9 meeting not to change any of the fees outlined in Rates Annex 4, which outlines the fees for various modes of transportation.
As such, the in-town transportation fees for children utilizing buses within Westlock, Barrhead and Swan Hills will stay at $415, though that fee is halved for ECS (Kindergarten) students.
The rural transportation fees for students who are bussed to a requested school will also stay at $460, though again, the rate is halved for ECS (Kindergarten) students.
Finally, parents requesting an alternate pick-up or drop-off site will have to pay $50 for each additional alternate site.
It should be noted that Pembina Hills does not receive any funding from Alberta Education for transporting students who live within 2.4 kilometres of their designated school, which is why the division must charge these fees in order to partially recoup its transportation costs.
Pembina Hills board chair Judy Lefebvre said the transportation rates annex is discussed in February of each year “so that if there is a change, the public will be aware before the registration date” later in the school year.
Despite recommending that the board keep the transportation fees as is for 2022-2023, administration did present a few options for potentially changing the fees, such as raising the amount charged to ECS students to 100 per cent or increasing in-town transportation fees to $520 per student (with Kindergarten students still paying 50 per cent).
And while they did accept that recommendation, Lefebvre said the trustees had some discussion about whether the provincial Student Transportation Task Force would have any impact on the division’s transportation fees.
The Student Transportation Task Force was originally formed in 2020 to address issues facing student transportation in Alberta. They ultimately submitted a report with a number of recommendations to the province in 2021.
Last spring, the province committed to implementing those recommendations in three phases. Phase 3 was supposed to involve the development of a student transportation funding model for either the 2022-2023 school year or 2023-2024 school year.
Lefebvre noted the province has been saying for quite a while now that there should be some transportation changes coming, but there’s been little action on that front.
“It's the same thing with (our push) to remove bus speed limits that we proposed two years ago,” she said. “It’s a process with the government, as we all know.”
