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Mariposa County Board Of Education Meeting Highlights For 10-19-2006
 

Bob Morse, Director of Maintenance, Operations and Transportation  rmorse@mariposa.k12.ca.us came up with a plan to change the bus routes for the Mariposa County Schools.
The motivation being to save the school some money on bus transportation costs and better air quality.
The letter was sent out to the parents of the affected children a few days before the board meeting.
Ours was postmarked October 16 in Mariposa but we received it on the 18th, one day before the board meeting.
Three families including the Sierra Sun Times were at the board meeting to voice their opinion on the bus schedule change.

Each parent has to read the new schedule to see how their chldren are to be affected by it.
The Sierra Sun Times has went through every route and has times of a lot of stops later and a few  where the children would arrive home earlier.
Examples include:
Some children would be picked up 31 minutes earlier in the morning (Route H @ 5056 Colorado Rd),
That same stop would have those same children getting home 29 minutes later at night!

Route N @Tavis Rd instead of arrving at 4:05 PM those children would arrive home at 5:11 PM
Sixty six minutes later !

Route P @Hites Cove and Best Rd., instead of arrving at 4:15 PM would now arrive at 4:51 PM
Thirty six minutes later.

On and on schedules are changed not for the good of the children and plus the busses have already changed once this year as the little ones and the high school students sit on the bus for quite a few minutes after school is out for the day, waiting for transfer students to arrive and get on the bus.

A spokesperson for the staff at MES read a statement saying the staff has grave concerns for the new route as now the students will be at school almost an hour later instead of the thirty five minutes they stay later already.




 		   Where are these kids to stay ?
Some will be sitting on the bus !
Can you imagine all these young children sitting next to each other for so long a period of time with no trouble taking place ?
Also from what we understand 2 aides are to watch over 226 children.

If this change has to happen we implore the board to get the message out to the parents on what is happening to the routes.

Even the web site is outdated on upcoming meetings agendas and minutes for the old meetings.
Agendas Minutes
And this is your Board of Trustees and Board of Education web site. Outlandish and amateurish to have such little regard for our children to establish a web site and not even keep it current.
Also it would be nice to have listed the email addresses of the board members.

Bob Morse was asked if he had any input on these new route changes and he said yes he had help with this schedule.
He also said he thought adequate notice had been given out over the changes.

Joel Simmons, For District 3 ( whose term expires in January 2007) was for implementing the changes.

Carol Dewey, For District 4 said parents have to learn as she did when moving up here that changes have to be made to accommodate their child's school day.

When it came to a vote though, all agreed to put this matter off until the next board meeting on November 8.

The School Board also agreed to enter into a food serving agreement with: Sodexho to provide food to all the schools in the district.

The contract has a 60 day quit clause in it for either side if they so wish to do so.

The company now provides Atwater Schools with their food distribution and are in the Reno area.
Two other companies came to Mariposa but did not submit a bid.

Sodexho promises a varied and healthy menu and to make a profit on the venture as the school right now is losing a 125K a year on food services !

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