Approval of Tiered Busing System

Tiered busing is an approach school districts use to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of student transportation services. This approach is especially popular when a school district's student enrollment reaches a certain size, as is the case with the Mankato Area Public Schools.  MAPS has been reviewing tiered busing possibilities for several years. Most recently, a transportation advisory group was formed in April 2019 to rigorously study tiered busing, and how that might be implemented in MAPS. Tiered busing would involve the existing fleet of buses picking up roughly half of all riders and bringing those students to school.  Then a second route would pick up the remaining students and bring them to school. Similar routing would occur at the end of the school day to bring students home. This will alter current start and end times for the school day. Through the study, it was determined there are several advantages to tiered busing that would help improve student transportation services.  These include: Less ride time on buses, age-like bus routes, fewer transfers and less congestion at transfer site, more room on buses, greater availability for families who want a private contract, reduced need for cab services, and more flexibility in routing. Due to MAPS’ current and forecasted growth, moving to a tiered approach to busing is inevitable. Implementing this now is a proactive measure that will prevent greater disruption in the future with an even larger student population.  Attached is a summary that provides greater detail of the tiered busing study and the process used leading to the following recommendation.

The administration recommends approval of the district implementing tiered busing as described for the start of the 2020-2021 school year.