Findlay Schools board talks transportation

FINDLAY — Findlay City Schools Superintendent Andy Hatton provided an update on transportation at Monday's school board meeting. Earlier this year, the school board approved $6 million in budget reductions, including $821,000 in transportation savings that eliminated high school busing and limited K-8 transportation to students living outside of a two-mile radius from their school of residence. The district continues to transport students who receive transportation services as part of an IEP or 504 plan, regardless of their grade or distance from school. During the 2024-25 school year, the distances to receive transportation had been a 0.75-mile radius for grades K-5, a 1.5-mile radius for grades 6-8, and 2-mile radius for grades 9-12. Transportation cuts were among $6 million in operational cuts announced for the 2025-26 school year after a 1% earned income tax levy failed on the November 2024 ballot. In May 2025, the district successfully passed the levy, and the district will receive the first of those funds in April 2026. The goal now is to restore some bus services so that students in grades K-5 who live outside of a one-mile radius and students in grades 6-12 who live outside of a two-mile radius can be bussed to school by January 2026. The district recently hired Bonnie Huff as transportation manager, and she is discovering ways to make the system more efficient, Hatton said. Personnel remains one of the biggest challenges. "School districts across the state of Ohio have been struggling to hire enough bus drivers for several years now," Hatton said. Findlay City Schools currently employs 24 licensed regular bus drivers, as well as one substitute driver and a few others going through testing and training. The district continues to hear from new applicants, and hopes to increase these numbers soon, Hatton said. However, a few applicants have been unable to pass the test for a commercial driver's license, and others have dropped out partway through the process as they find work elsewhere, Hatton said. "We are in competition with other school districts and other entities in the private sector," he said. Companies needing dump truck drivers, for example, can offer not only higher salaries but year-round employment, he said. Hatton said the school district is working to get drivers out on their routes more quickly once they are hired, keeping safety in mind while also ensuring efficiency. They are also using technology to improve the situation. The district is implementing a program called TransFinder which will help map efficient routes, provide drivers with turn-by-turn directions, and allow students to check in and check out of the bus as they arrive and depart. Before TransFinder, "our Transportation Department was hand-routing every single student who rode the bus, manually inputting the information for each student, and then tweaking as the year went on ... again, manually," wrote Kelly Cheney, director of communications, in a Tuesday email to The Courier. "Adjustments were not able to be made quickly for special circumstances, like construction, for example, so buses were delayed. This program will allow us to immediately message parents of any and all buses as soon as it is needed. Substitute drivers will have turn-by-turn directions to follow as they drive a new route, and student stop information will be updated daily." TransFinder includes a feature allowing parents to pinpoint the location of a specific bus through an app on their phone, allowing them to plan better for both the morning and afternoon routes. However, this has not yet been implemented, as it proved hard to triangulate efficiently using cell phones, Hatton said. The district is now moving to using GPS, which relies on satellites and is more accurate. In the near future, they will be installing what are known as Zonar tablets on each bus, which provide GPS data along with other transportation data and analytics like bus speed or how long a given bus was idling. Hatton said the district is working to address all the pieces of this puzzle and hopes to have a draft of an updated plan by Thanksgiving. However, he said, the priority is to get it right, even if it takes longer. He said the goal is to enhance service partway through this year and then maintain the same level of service in the 2026-27 school year. Hatton said the district appreciates the community's support, not only in passing the May levy but in navigating the challenges related to budget shortfalls before those funds came through. "Our community came together and is supporting each other to get kids to school," he said. On Monday, the school board also reviewed its Student Wellness and Success Funds (SWSF) and Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA) FCS District Plan for 2025-2026, which will be posted on the school district website. These funds are used to improve the wellness of children who receive free and reduced-price meals, helping them to overcome obstacles to learning by improving their physical and mental wellness. The district has received this funding in past years, but a new requirement this year is that, following approval by the board, the plan must be posted on the district's website.