Agreement sought on busing

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“We were willing to have a longer bus trip in order to have a safe bus trip, and [Heidenreich] was very receptive to that,” she said, adding that the majority of private-school parents would be willing to make this compromise in order to send their children on regular school buses.

Both Clavin-Higgins and Heidenreich said they would like to find a lasting solution to this issue. “Whenever you want to reach a resolution, you want it to be sustainable,” Heidenreich said, “because if it’s not, you just kind of kick the can down the road, and then you’re in the same place next year with the same issues.”

He said that fewer than 30 students from Valley Stream are attending Chaminade this year, but the district uses three yellow buses to transport them. If the district sent only one or two buses to Chaminade, he added, the costs would be reduced. “The reason we can’t do it now, though,” Heidenreich said, “is because if we had one bus with no centralized pickup point, the first kid who gets picked up could be on the bus for close to two hours.”

At their meeting on March 21, the two dozen or so parents who attended decided to write letters to school board members, administrators and politicians and give them their reasons why the transportation issue is important to them.

The state budget was expected to be finalized later this week, and it could provide additional aid to the district. If that were the case, board trustees would decide how the funds would be allocated at one of their April meetings.

By adopting the budget, the board approved $2.65 million in cuts that included 15 full-time teaching positions, several part-time teacher assistants, six part-time teachers, four custodians, one laborer and one clerical position. Also, three sports teams — rifle, bowling and golf — and five clubs at each of the four schools were eliminated.

The private-school parents plan to attend the board’s April 2 work session.

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