Delaney Myers: School bus issues raise questions for school zoning

The Bus and Coach Association questions whether a century-old policy is still fit for purpose after it caused school bus routes to be cut. 

Chief Executive Delaney Myers says the Ministry of Education decides bus services on cost, the number of students, and available public transport - but things have changed in the past 100 years. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Here's one rural community left without a school bus has
taken matters into its own hands. A Hawk's Bay couple
has gone and purchased a twenty two seater to service
their community. The Ministry of Education has cut funding and
left no alternatives. A scenario that's echoing across the country
and joining me now is Bus and Coach Association CEO

(00:39):
Delaney Sorry should I say Delaney Meyers?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Good? A good morning, Tim?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
So is it's what's happening here?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah? So, what we're seeing around the country, Tim, is
that the Ministry of Education has been reviewing the school
bus routes third it contracts at contracts private bus companies
to run those routes around the country. It's been during
reviews of those in a sound significant number that it
sees don't comply with us and is taking steps to

(01:10):
remove those routes. But you know, what I think is
really important to note is the policy itself hasn't really
changed and pretty close to one hundred years. But what
has happened is that the Ministry is taking a much
stronger lie on when it will and won't provide assistance
to get kids to school.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Those guidelines to do with the number of children that
are route conservice and whether they can get to school
some other way.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, that's right. So there are three main criteria that
the Ministry of Education will look at when it's deciding
whether or not it's going to provide assistance to students.
So it will look at the closest or the distance
to the school for those kids to get to that school,
they've got to live a certain distance from it, they've
got to be going to their closest school, and there

(01:56):
needs to be no public transport that's available for them.
But there's a couple of other bits that sort of
then get popped on top as to whether they'll also
provide a school bus, and that overlay will be the
number of kids, so they need to be at least
eight of them, and there's a cost factor that they're
taken to account as well around the actual cost to
deliver those services. And there has been that much harder

(02:19):
line that's actually been taken and that's resulted in an
awful lot of school bus throughout around the country.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Ben Camp, They've got now the private operation, if I
could call it that, but more of shall I say?
The community operations already got nineteen students booked at fifty
bucks for a seat each week. It seems like there
is the demand. Have they got this one wrong?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Look? It absolutely does sound like there's a demand for it.
And what it sounds like the situation is, is it
possibly that may not be the closest school that those
kids can go to, And the ministry is therefore sort
of saying, look, if you're not going to go to
your closest school, then we're not going to provide you
with that assistance. But you know, if parents want to
have that choice, they want to have the ability to

(03:04):
choose the right school for their family. But want to
come back to is that policy that's sitting there is
one hundred years old? And the question really is is
this still fits a purpose? You know, there's not a
lot that we still do the same way as we
do one hundred years ago, you know, and surely the
way we picked schools for our kids has also changed
in that time.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I thought you were exaggerating, but is it seriously one
hundred years old?

Speaker 3 (03:27):
It seriously is so? The school buses started running one
hundred years ago, and it was all about you know, schools.
Schools were consolidated at that time, so there used to
be little schoolhouses and they were consolidays into bigger and
better schools. And part of that deal was arranging to
actually transport the kids into those schools because it wasn't

(03:49):
feasible for those families that were out on farms to
take sort of a couple of hours out of their
day to get those kids to school.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well indeed, yeah, hey, Delaney, thanks so much for your time.
Fascinating one hundred year old all there. That is Delainey
Myers from the Bus and Coach Association.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
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