North Penn official concerned over effects of Catholic school closures on busing

North Penn official concerned over effects of Catholic school closures on busing Image

Public school districts are already looking ahead to what the closure of some Catholic schools will mean to their transportation services.Previously, a Blue Ribbon Commission recommended to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput that 44 elementary schools and four high schools be closed or consolidated in the Philadelphia area.Under the plan, four area Catholic elementary schools will be combined. St. Rose of Lima will close and students will attend St. Stanislaus. St. Maria Goretti will close and students will be sent to Corpus Christi. The bishop will consider appeals and a final decision on the school closures is expected to be announced next month.Vincent Sherpinsky, the president of the North Penn School Board, is concerned that the planned school closures, which will result in students being sent to other schools, will cause some students to lose their public school busing. Under state law public school districts must bus private and parochial school students to schools up to 10 miles outside their district.Once the archdioceses announces its final school closure list, Sherpinsky said he will ask the North Penn transportation department to study what the closures will mean for the district.Several years ago the district was hit with a lawsuit by parents who sent their children to a school in the Quakertown area, Sherpinsky said. And this past fall, North Penn officials faced complaints from scores of parents when problems with school bus schedules occurred after the district joined a consortium with other school districts to provide transportation to private and parochial school students who go to schools outside the district. The idea of the consortium was to reduce transportation costs.“I based my concerns on what happened to North Penn a few years ago with the Quakertown area school issue,” Sherpinsky said. “Transportation always seems to be a secondary issue until it’s needed and then people focus on the accompanying issues. Our experiences this past fall with shared transportation services make us very sensitive to any challenges facing us next fall. The closing, transferring, and/or relocating of students will directly impact the transportation budget for North Penn this next school year and we need to plan for any impact now since our budgets are being developed today.”“What some people aren’t talking about is the impact transfers and closing could have with regard to transportation for families who are close to or at the transportation limits for busing,” Sherpinsky said. “While I don’t know the exact impact for North Penn, I do know that during the Montgomery County Transportation Consortium original presentations there were several other school districts in Montgomery County that had large numbers of private school families close to the state-mandated transportation limit of 10 miles beyond their home district’s borders. Moving to another school could take these people beyond the maximum limit, which would stop their access to transportation by their home districts.”Souderton Area Schools Assistant Superintendent Frank Gallagher said 86 students who live within the Souderton Area district currently attend St. Maria Goretti. Some other students from the Harleysville area are already at Corpus Christi, so he doesn’t believe it will be a problem to bus the transferring St. Maria Goretti students to Corpus Christi next fall.Meanwhile, Kenneth Gavin, a spokesman for the archdioceses, said the Blue Ribbon Commission had taken transportation into account when it made its recommendations. Continued…