Update on Plan to Put Students on City Buses
Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News) - There is still a chance older students in the Rochester School District could use the city’s public transit system to get to and from school, but it won’t be happening for at least a couple years.
Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Michael Munoz says the school district, the city of Rochester, and First Transit have been studying the possibility for about a year and he says those discussions have been favorable. At the same time, some key questions involving costs have yet to be answered and the city needs additional time to expand its fleet of buses before the plan could be implemented. Munoz, during his regular appearance on KROC-AM’s Rochester Today show with Tracy McCray and Andy Brownell, indicated it would likely be the fall of 2019 before students might be riding the city buses.
The city is especially interested in the possibility of transporting students because of the opportunities it would provide for expanding the number of routes and the number of buses in the community's public transit system.
Munoz says the school district sees it as a way to implement a one-tier student transportation system that would use the traditional yellow school buses to bring elementary-age children to and from school at the same time older students would be using the public transit system. That would allow the elementary schools and the secondary schools to start classes at the same time in the morning, and give the older students some additional time to meet their needs for sleep.
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