District requests more buses ahead of new single dismissal time

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The Anglophone East School District is preparing to change its end-of-day busing system as the province moves to a single dismissal time for students from kindergarten through Grade 8. 

Superintendent Randolph MacLEAN said during Tuesday’s district education council that the transportation team has been planning for the change for months but said there may still be “growing pains” this fall.  

“I’m hoping it’s as smooth as possible,” he said.

“Will it go off without a hitch? No. No plan is flawless but we will do our best and we will communicate, communicate and over-communicate and where there are mistakes, we will course-correct.” 

Because the district will need to move from three bus runs to two, MacLEAN said they’ve requested more buses for the fall.

District spokesperson Stephanie Patterson said the district will have seven new bus routes to accommodate for the new school opening in September and the enrollment growth.  She said it will require some bus routes to double up in the afternoon.

“They will pick up some students at the end of the day, drop them safely at their stops and then return to the school to pick up a second group of students. These would be shorter bus runs. Ex: 20 minutes round trip,” she said.

Diana Chávez, spokesperson for the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, said the province has not yet received all requests for buses from school districts but the department anticipates being able to meet the demand for September 2024.

Academic upside

MacLEAN said the change in hours means students in kindergarten through Grade 2 will get an extra hour of instruction each day, the equivalent of nearly 48 extra days of school a year. 

He said it will give young learners more to focus on numeracy and literacy, both of which have seen a drop within the district. 

According to data from the district’s report card released last year, 74.2 per cent of Grade 3 students were successful in reading for English Language Arts, down 1.85 per cent from 2022. The number of Grade 3 students who were successful in writing in the same subject dropped 2.34 per cent to 62.6 per cent. 

Only 52.7 per cent of students in Grade 4 were successful on their provincial reading assessment, down more than 3 per cent from 2022 .

In Grade 6, 73.6 per cent of students were successful in reading in English language arts and 68.1 per cent were successful in writing in the subject, both down from 2022. There was also a drop of more than 5 per cent on the results of the provincial reading assessment.

Grade 4 students fell below the provincial average in mathematics with only 44.2 per cent reaching appropriate or above levels compared to 50. 2 provincially. 

MacLEAN said the extra hour has a “huge academic learning upside” that the district is excited to capitalize on.