A key part of the Fayetteville-Manlius School District’s plan to adjust its schools’ start times will be the findings of a transportation efficiency study currently underway.
On Dec. 8, the F-M Board of Education approved a $17,000 consulting agreement with Transportation Advisory Services in Pittsford. The study will focus on three key areas:
- Reviewing the district’s current routes to see if there are efficiencies that could be implemented;
- Devising a potential route plan in case New York state in the future mandates later start times for high school students; and
- Creating a plan that may change the number of trips a single bus driver would make in the mornings and afternoons in an effort to ease turnaround time pressure between school runs.
“We wanted to work with a group experienced in this area that could take a look at what we currently do and what could be possible to enhance the experience of our students and staff,” said F-M Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Brad Corbin, who oversees the district’s transportation department. “They will be taking into account such factors as the state’s minimum number of instructional hours, the addition of a 30-minute lunch period at the high school and potential mandated changes from the state.”
California became the first state to mandate later start times for middle and high school students in 2022-23, and both the New York State Senate and Assembly have introduced several bills in recent years that would mandate public school start times, including most recently at the beginning of 2025.
“When this study is complete, we expect to be in a position where if the state requires us to make a change, we will be ahead of the game in terms of research and planning and will have the critical information at hand on how we could implement those new requirements,” Superintendent Craig J. Tice said.
The study is anticipated to be completed in February. It will assist the district in finalizing its 2026-27 school start and dismissal times based on the district’s School Start Time Committee’s recent recommendation to shift arrival and dismissal times at the middle and elementary schools by no more than 15 minutes and to add to the high school’s master schedule a lunch period for all students.
Electric Buses
The consultants will also take into consideration potential future impacts on bus routes because of the state’s electric school bus mandate.
Each bus run between buildings takes about 45 minutes to complete; however, the way the routes are currently set, there is not a full 45 minutes between all buildings. Buses make triple trips in the mornings and in the afternoons. This requires each bus driver to drop off students at each of the three building levels (elementary, middle and high school) in the morning, traveling the entire district three different times, and then do all three levels again in the afternoon, said Transportation Supervisor Susan Stearns.
In February, the district borrowed an electric bus from New York Bus Sales Inc. to conduct trial runs so district officials could evaluate how it would perform on F-M’s existing bus routes. They found that a fully charged electric bus barely has enough power to complete a three-tier bus run. In addition, there is not enough time between the morning and afternoon run to fully charge the battery.
Instead, the district would have to buy more electric buses so that drivers could return to the bus garage and swap out a bus with a low battery for a fully charged one before starting another route. That would require time to be added to the existing minimum 45-minute turnaround time needed between scheduled routes, which the consultants will consider in their research.