Board Of Ed Agrees to Hire Busing Consultant

The Kings Park Board of Education agreed at Tuesday evening's meeting to hire a busing consultant to update a past analysis of the system.

An conducted by Transportation Advisory Services suggested that the district keep its current system in place. The board has said that the nearly eight year old study needs to be updated with current numbers in order to do a fair comparison between contract busing and in-house busing. 

"We have agreed to hire a consultant who is going to do some updating of the report that was done in 2004," said Agruso. "He has a copy of our report and he has done this kind of work for other school districts. We are trying to get up to date information."

Agruso has said in the past that the update is needed in order to provide an "apples to apples" comparison.

The board voted 4 to 1 in favor of the decision with trustee Steve Weber casting the dissenting vote.

"I believe we already know as a school district what has to be done to help make the a more efficient operation without compromising safety," said Weber in a recent conversation. "The money to fund this study, in my opinion is an unnecessary expenditure."

The cost of the study is approximately $6,000, of which close to half will be reimbursed to the district, resulting in a total cost to the district of about $3,500. The study will be conducted by BOCES and will take about five weeks to complete.