Over the summer, the school committee announced that the Malden Public School buses were going to be cut due to lack of funds. The choice to cut buses was unanimous since it was $400,000 that would then be freed in the budget. There have been questions of what the school committee was going to do about the children who relied on the bus system. These children now have to either be driven by their parents or take public transportation alone.
At first the school committee said that they were going to look for solutions and some suggestions did come up. The main idea proposed was a cost-share transportation program where the parents help to cover the cost so that their children would be able to take the bus for the rest of the 2016-2017 school year. After some discussion the school committee decided on the price of $250 for one child and $400 for two or more children.
At the past school committee on November 14th, the school committee took a final vote on whether to pass this. It was a unanimous choice against it.The committee based this decision off of the fact that it was unclear whether or not they would be able to find funding for the $40,000 cost.
There has been an upset over the decision because parents are worried about how their children will deal with the winter weather and the transportation problems that it brings. No further plans of how the city will deal with this have been announced.
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