Trustees with Prairie South School Division have updated a board policy to make it clearer to rural families where their children can attend school based on their main residence.
Division administration brought forward an updated board policy 17 during the Oct. 6 board meeting, likely in response to several rural families asking for alternative transportation arrangements so their children could attend another school outside their catchment area.
The main change was to section 1.3.1 of the transportation policy, which deals with rural students in kindergarten to Grade 12. The word “primary” was inserted so the paragraph reads, “Students who are attending the catchment area school that is designated by the location of their primary residence and who reside outside of the town where the school is located.”
“We are trying to provide clarity of our own policy for our staff and stakeholders — and I think it does that,” said trustee Robert Bachmann during the meeting.
Primary residence means the child or children live in one household, explained education director Ryan Boughen. If children live in two residences because of a family situation, then the family must provide direction to the division to designate which place is the primary residence.
Trustees later voted to adopt the updated policy.
Changing bus routes
Eighteen families asked in April for changes to their children’s catchment school area for the 2022-23 school year, with trustees granting three requests. Meanwhile, two families spoke to the board in September and October about their children’s transportation situations and the desire to attend a school outside the catchment area.
While it’s unknown what board decisions arose from those presentations since they were behind closed doors, the concerns of Amanda Hixson became public after she spoke to CTV Regina about appealing her request in September after the division denied her plea in August.
Frustrations over current routes
Hixson transferred her oldest daughter — now in Grade 12 — to Mossbank School from École Gravelbourg School when the pandemic began because of her daughter’s issues at the school. She also wanted to transfer her other three children, but Mossbank lacked a pre-kindergarten program, so she left them at Gravelbourg until this year.
That year, she drove her oldest daughter to a different pick-up spot while the other three kids caught the bus at their home because Prairie South declined to send two buses from different schools to the same address, CTV reported.
When she applied for a busing exemption in August, the school division told her she couldn’t have a bus come to her yard since the family was outside the catchment area.
“We’re out of it by about 150 metres max,” said Hixson. “Where our house is in, our yard is Gravelbourg catchment, the road in front of our yard is the line and right across the road is the Mossbank catchment.”
Prairie South allows families to apply for transportation outside their catchment area but must do so in April before the new school year.
Many students, many routes
Ryan Boughen, director of education, told CTV that this stipulation exists because the division must schedule 120 routes for its rural and city kids. Hixson can receive bus service within her catchment area, but she requested service outside the area too late.
Hixson claims she was unaware of this when transferring her three children from one school to another. She appealed her decision through the division, board, and transportation department, but they gave her the same denial.
Instead, PSSD offered her the option to use a different pick-up location at the bus driver’s house, eight kilometres down the road from her house.
“I’m quite frustrated that we can’t get a bus to pick up the kids to go to school,” said Hixson.
Student safety
During her appeal, she offered to take her children across the street into the proper catchment area where their grandmother has an approach in her field, wait with them and be there after school. However, the school division also denied this request, citing safety concerns.
The Education Act clearly states that school divisions are responsible for children’s safety, which means students’ safety is the No. 1 concern for Prairie South, Boughen told CTV.
“If we had children standing all over fields all over Saskatchewan and we agreed to pick children up in different spots in a field, that’s not safe,” he added.
Hixson plans to apply for transportation outside her catchment this spring; meanwhile, she will continue to drive her children to school each day.
The next PSSD meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 1.
