La Conner Schools has travel costs woes

A sudden shortage of bus drivers at La Conner Schools is forcing daily routes to be combined while threatening cancellation of student field trips and overnight travel to athletic events.

Randy Swift of the schools short-handed transportation department apprised school board members of the troubling situation during their two-hour meeting Jan. 9.

Swift said one driver retired over winter break. In November supervisor Kim Pedroza left for a similar post with the Stanwood School District.

“We don’t have enough drivers to do our regular routes right now,” Swift said. “We’ve had to combine two routes to pick up kids. Some kids are on the bus for an hour-and-a-half. Parents are hacked off at us.

“We have no drivers for field trips,” Swift added. “No one is doing the administrative work that Kim used to do. You guys need to know that. Right now, it’s past critical. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here.”

He offered board members one glimmer of hope. “We can have a driver/trainer out of Snohomish County right now,” Swift said.

The shortage could curb a board approved La Conner High girls’ basketball team road trip to southwest Washington to play two larger Vancouver area schools.

“We may have to charter this,” district director of operations and planning Bobby Vaughn told board members. “I’m not saying we can’t staff this, but it could take some effort to work this out.”

The district will research the cost of charter travel, which Swift estimated to be around $220 per hour, while also seeking to assign a driver in-house for the Vancouver trip.

“As much as I love basketball,” said board member John Agen, a boys’ hoops program assistant and former Braves player, “$220 per hour is not a good value.”

The board moved to cap Vancouver travel expenses at $4,000, including food and lodging.

“It’s important,” said board member Lynette Cram, one of the girls’ team’s assistant coaches and who abstained from voting on the issue, “but it’s not as important as getting kids to school every day.”

The board weighed other long distance travel costs.

Members, after lengthy discussion, approved $3,000 in out-of-state travel expenses for Superintendent Will Nelson to attend a conference March 12-14 in Washington, D.C., where he will lobby on behalf of the district for additional federal impact aid monies. La Conner received about $500,000 less in impact funds than was expected with its latest allotment, putting pressure on its $14 million budget.

“We had a $500,000 reduction in aid funding that wasn’t expected,” Nelson noted. “It’s important to talk with them. This is important work.”

Board members agreed.

They also approved travel costs for five staff members to attend a Professional Learning Communities summit in Arizona in late February. The district in in the first year of its commitment to the PLC format, which trains staff to work and plan in teams to more effectively meet student needs.

“This,” Deyo stressed, “is about academic performance improvement.”

Declining student enrollment, which in conjunction with the reduced federal impact aid allotment and end of federal COVID emergency funding, is putting a strain on the district budget and fund balance goals was also addressed.. Members discussed marketing to Conway families in hopes they will enroll their students in high school here rather than in Mount Vernon or Stanwood.

“We need to work at telling them why they can and should come to La Conner,” Deyo said. “We need to tell them about our new math curriculum, drama and all the other things we do.”

Nelson said La Conner’s K-12 enrollment is at 528, down 50 students from pre-pandemic levels.

“Fifty kids,” Nelson said, “is $500,000 in lost revenue.”