The Watertown Schools will run a second bus this year due to high demand for seats during the school year that begins in September.
For the past three years middle school students received free busing while Watertown High School students attended the temporary high school at Moxley Field, which sits just across the street from Watertown Middle School. The move was made it part to reduce the traffic going to and from the two campuses.
With the new high school opening in September, high schoolers will not be attending class at the Moxley campus. In April, the School Committee voted to change the school bus policy, and increased bus fees. The district got more requests to ride the bus than available space, Superintendent Dede Galdston said. A second bus has been added to accommodate all the riders.
“So there’s been a lot of concern in the community around middle school busing, in particular,” Galdston said. “Not all people were completely aware of the fact that there were some shifts in terms of free bussing for pretty much all, which happened with our middle school students and our high school students due to the construction project.”
The students who can ride the bus for free are only those mandated by the state, which are riders at Hosmer Elementary School who live 1.5 miles or farther from school, and sixth graders who live 2 miles or more from Watertown Middle School.
The plan was to have one bus, and if space remained after all the mandated riders got a seat, then other students could pay to ride the bus. Priority was given to those living the farthest from school, Galdston said. Students can still ride the late bus from the Middle School, which leaves at 3:45 p.m., Galdston said. Riders may have to get off at a stop and walk the rest of the way home, she added.
The original allotment of seats went to 52 students — 24 mandated and 28 fee-paying riders, Galdston said. The amount could be increased to 60, but there is a waiting list of 92 students.
“I know that there were a lot of upset families, and I completely understand that,” Galdston said. “And I think that until it actually happens — we sent out communication, but I think that it until you get the registration form, and then you’re told we don’t get to seat on the bus, then it became, ‘What happened?'”
Galdston said the district got a high number of requests from sixth grade riders, leaving no room for other students in other grades at the middle school. The waiting list includes 32 seventh- and eighth-graders who live more than 2 miles from the school.
“So we told too many sixth graders they had opportunities and did not go back to the distance,” Galdston said at the July 27 meeting. “So I own that 100% and I would like to talk about a potential solution for one year.”
To provide enough seats to handle all the students seeking to ride the bus, Galdston recommended funding a second bus.
“That would allow us to rectify the situation of the families that live two miles away,” Galdston said. “They still don’t fall under the School Committee policy, but we did not do the right thing by having sixth-graders fill the bus first.”
The cost of the second bus is $67,500, Galdston told the School Committee. The price is lower than the $92,000 overall cost because part of it was paid for by the fees being charged to ride the bus. The district also has $36,000 in the transportation revolving fund to help cover the cost, Galdston said.
On July 30, the School Committee approved the cost of the second bus.
When the rider numbers for the upcoming school year were made, they were coming off of free busing for all, Galdston said. The numbers will be more solid when the School Committee looks at the budget for school buses in the following school year, she added, because the number will be based on the families who will pay to ride the bus.
Another recommendation for the 2027-28 school year, Galdston said, is to offer a la carte options, where students could choose to ride only in the morning, only in the afternoon, or both ways.