Wayland Kindergarteners Get Their Own Buses Next Year

Wayland’s School Committee has reorganized the transportation routes to devote buses solely to kindergarteners.

The reorganization was prompted both by the length of time kindergartners spent on buses shared with Wayland’s first- through fifth-grade students as well as a desire to achieve a greater financial efficiency for the buses being used.

School Business Administrator Geoff MacDonald told School Committee members Monday night that some kindergarten students spent as long as 60 minutes on the bus in past years as drivers dropped off students at and before traveling to the to drop off kindergarteners.

Beginning next school year, four buses will be devoted to transporting only Wayland’s full-day and, in most cases, traditional kindergarten students. Traditional kindergarten students will continue to be transported home mid-day by three buses.

The cost efficiency is, in fact, related to those three mid-day buses. MacDonald explained that hiring those buses for only the mid-day transport in past years was expensive due to minimum hours requirements for the drivers.

“For an incrementally small bump, we can employ those buses for the whole day,” MacDonald explained.

Superintendent Paul Stein said there are increases in costs in some areas, but decreases in others under the reorganized system.

“Bottom line is it doesn’t cost us anything to do this,” Stein said.

The reconfigured bus routes will reduce the number of buses servicing Claypit Hill from nine buses down to seven. One of the buses will join the three previously hired for the mid-day routes, and those four buses will provide morning and afternoon kindergarten service as well as cover the middle of the day routes. The other Claypit Hill bus will no longer be needed in Wayland, so Wayland is reducing it’s overall bus need by one.

MacDonald estimated that the reduction in Claypit Hill buses should not lead to any students being on the bus longer than 45-50 minutes since all the routes have been made more efficient.

Loker School Principal Brian Jones told School Committee members that communication with parents of kindergarteners will be “very important off the bat.” They will need to be made aware that two buses, one for kindergarteners and the other for older elementary children, will be passing the same stops in many cases.

Next year's kindergarten enrollment currently stands at four traditional kindergarten classes of 20 students each and five full-day kindergarten classes with 21 students each.

Editor's Note: We incorrectly identified the Loker School principal in the original article. The article has been corrected, and we apologize for the error.