Few parents opt to leave Ridgewood school bus service
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2012, 10:54 AM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
A new law that offers parents whose children do not take the school bus the ability to opt out of the service will not likely be saving Ridgewood taxpayers any money. Few parents notified this summer decided to waive the school bus service.
Accordingly, the district will not be able to consolidate any of its seven largely empty buses, as it had hoped.
On a daily basis, buses in Ridgewood are less than half full, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Angelo DeSimone.
“I hoped we would receive enough opt-out students to be able to reconfigure routes and eliminate one bus,” said DeSimone, who noted that each school bus costs the district $35,000 to $40,000 a year.
“We thought this would be good,” said Superintendent Dan Fishbein. “They are fully subscribed but under-utilized … [But] it doesn’t allow us to opt out of a route at all.”
