NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS 2005

Portsmouth, RI Eliminates Some Bus Monitors

Portsmouth's Middle School bus monitors will be off their routes starting next week.

School administrators have followed through on their plan to remove monitors from middle school bus routes, as part of their efforts to chip away at a looming school deficit that now stands at roughly $789,000.

Removing the bus monitors - a move that has been approved by the state Department of Education - will save about $39,000. State law requires that bus monitors ride all buses carrying students in kindergarten through fifth grade. But Portsmouth's fifth-graders attend the middle school and do not ride on the elementary school buses.

The 21 monitors who supervise Portsmouth Middle School bus routes met Wednesday with their boss at Laidlaw Education Services and learned their hours on middle school routes will be eliminated, effective Wednesday. Most of the monitors also work the elementary routes, which aren't affected by this budget cut.

A group of monitors has protested the cut at multiple Town Council and School Committee meetings the last few weeks.

School Superintendent Susan F. Lusi said she met with the middle school parent-teacher organization last week about the cut, which the School Committee approved last month. She said 11 parents spoke against removing the bus monitors. Of those who spoke against the move, two parents have seventh- and eighth-graders and a third parent's child doesn't even ride the middle school bus.

"I do not in any way discount their concerns," Lusi said. "We're down to eight parents (in opposition) in a school with 250 fifth-graders, the vast majority of whom ride the bus."

Bus monitor Debbie Jenkins said the move will cut most monitors' hours in half, to 10 a week. Most are paid between $8.40 and $9.70 an hour.

"We're not happy," she said Wednesday afternoon. "The majority of bus monitors are very displeased. I cried. I had to say goodbye to my kids today. I had to tell them, 'I'm kind of afraid of what's going to happen to you guys.' It's just a sad thing."

School officials suggested jobs to the monitors as school aides in Portsmouth elementary schools and as food service providers in Middletown schools, Lusi said.

"We are sensitive to the fact that this is people's livelihoods," Lusi said.

Jenkins said officials didn't give the monitors enough time to plan for other employment. She said she was lucky - she got a job at the Naval Station Newport's Navy Exchange store and decided to give up her 11 years as a bus monitor.

"Some of us had no other choice. They had to stay," she said. "They've got to have a little income coming in."

School administrators are writing to middle school parents to explain the monitors' removal and to detail "proactive steps" students and parents can take to make sure bus rides run smoothly, Lusi said. Plus, she said, school officials will remind students how they should behave on the bus.

"We cannot tolerate misbehavior on the bus," she said. "It's a very small number of kids. Riding the bus is a privilege, not a right and if they misbehave, they will be off the bus."

By Meaghan Wims/Daily News staff

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