District officials said Monday night that they’ve figured out a way to push back the start time for elementary school kids under a planned new schedule from 7:50 a.m. to 8 a.m.
By adding two smaller-size “type 2” buses to its fleet, the district can “shave off” run time for buses that currently must travel out-of-town in order to find a place to turn around before picking up more kids and getting them to school, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi. At a cost of $63,000 apiece, the two smaller buses (seating about 16 to 20) would be operated by drivers already employed by New Canaan Public Schools and “they would shave off the couple of longest runs and help us move our time tighter and get to that 8 o’clock,” Luizzi told members of the Board of Education during their regular meeting. “We can get to 8 o’clock with our first tier, the elementary kids,” he said during the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “It’s 8:35 [a.m.] for our second and 9:20 [a.m.] for our third, but we will keep working on the other two,” he said. “What we are doing is what we said, we are going to continue to dive into it, to look at it, to refine the runs,” Luizzi said.
