District 197 to Cut Morning Bus Service To Private Schools

School District 197 will no longer provide morning bus service for students at Convent of the Visitation School, St. Thomas Academy and two other private schools this fall, a measure that is projected to save the district $30,000.

About 15 students will be affected by the drop of service, said Mark Fortman, chief operations officer of ISD 197.

District 197 previously provided morning bus service to students attending St. Thomas Academy and Visitation in Mendota Heights, as well as St. Croix Lutheran in West St. Paul and Trinity Lone Oak Lutheran School in Eagan.

The school district is making the transportation change both for budgetary reasons and because the private school morning start times didn’t line up with the ISD197 schools starting times.

“In an era of ever shrinking budgets, we needed to make a change,” Fortman said.

The district will continue to provide afternoon bus service to the four private schools.

While many St. Thomas Academy and Visitation students drive to school or are dropped off by parents, the schools also operate a cooperative bus transportation system to parts of the metro area. That service could possibly be expanded to cover the students dropped by ISD 197, said Robley Evans, director of business affairs at St. Thomas Academy.

“We have about 92 to 100 students outside the school district that we have buses go out and get them and bring them to Visitation and STA,” Evans said. “We rent outside bus services for those students who are coming from six different parts of the Twin Cities.

Evans had heard of no STA or Visitation families who would be switching schools because of the bus change.

“Just morning service is not going to affect us too much,” Evans said. “It might affect Visitation more with their grade school.”

In addition to looking at expanding the contracted bus service, Evans said the private schools could try and connect area parents into car pools.