When in-class schooling resumes in Nova Scotia, there will be new rules around busing.
Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development, Zach Churchill, says the new policy is the product of a lot of work over a couple of years with quite a bit of input from parents.
“We’ve had over 8000 people submit feedback on transportation in their school community through a survey and we’ve engaged our school advisory councils on transportation policy, so a lot of work has gone into the announcement.”
He says there is some flexibility in their policy.
“For elementary kids, the distance has been lowered to 1.6 kilometres and for senior and junior high, it’s been lowered to 2.4. For other parents or students that believe they should be picked up with a bus, that there’s a safety concern with their walking route, we do have a review process.”
The review of the previous policy did find that “families and students outside HRM are quite satisfied with existing bus services” and that many of the regional centres, as well as the Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial were already using those distances and sometimes, even shorter distances.
