Nanuet Board of Education Approves Change in Start/End Times for 2011-12 School Year

With the release of the 2011-12 budget for the Nanuet School District, there are large cuts in transportation and personnel.

The Board of Education decided at last night’s meeting to approve the changes in the start and end times for each school building for the 2011-2012 school year.

There’s about a 20-minute time difference next year with the elementaries and Barr starting later and the high school starting earlier. Here are the new start/end times:

At the March 1 School Board meeting, Joanne Cavaliere, secretary to the Assistant Superintendent of Business, presented a proposal to reduce transportation costs by changing what the schools refer to as busing tiers.

Currently, the district is on a 2-tier bus system which uses 24 buses for the high school and middle school and 18 buses for Highview and Miller elementaries.

With the Middle and High schools starting school at the same time, there had to be two rounds of busing to get the Barr Middle and Nanuet High school students to school.

However, with the change in start/end times for the schools, the time that Barr and NHS will start and end is staggered from each other, eliminating an unnecessary round of busing.

With the new busing system, the district will switch to a 3-tier bus system, eliminating six buses at a cost savings of approximately $356,238; also, by providing private school transportation through neighboring school districts, and incorporating some of the bus runs through the public school runs, the cost savings would be an additional $321,156, said Cavaliere at the March 1 meeting.

With one less round of busing, the school can now save up to an estimated amount of $520,000, said Phil Sions, assistant superintendent of business for the district at last night’s meeting.

“That’s quite a bit of money that we’re saving and shows why we’re doing this,” said Board Vice President Ron Hansen.