The Mid-Prairie School Board has approved a new discretionary busing policy. According to Superintendent Mark Schneider, discretionary busing is any time the school is transporting a child they aren’t legally required to transport. This includes children who live within a certain distance of the school, children riding the bus to a relative or child care provider’s house, or groups of children riding the bus to another student’s house. The board decided to charge parents for discretionary busing, and set the fee at $2 per day per student. Schneider added, the fee is the same regardless if they are transported two miles or 20.

The next step is to figure out the best way of obtaining the fees. Schneider explained, “We have to come up with a procedure now, that’s not only convenient for school personnel to make this happen, but also as convenient as we possibly can for parents. So it’s just figuring out the process by which all of this is going to happen.” According to Schneider, part of the difficulty is that some of the route buses have room for students that don’t normally ride, while others don’t. Because of that, he feels it’s likely the parents will have to give advance notice of when their children will be riding the bus, and the school will charge them at that time.