Magnet school bus routes may be cut

It wants to cut some bus routes to magnet schools. It's a move the district says would save $16 million.

Currently the district is spending more money transporting magnet school students than it is spending on magnet school programs.

The average cost of transporting a magnet school student is a little over $1,400 a year, while transporting a student to his or her neighborhood school averages around $221 a year.

The reason it's costing so much to transport magnet students is because most attend schools which are more than 10 miles away from their neighborhoods. One of the options the district is looking at is creating hubs or drop and ride locations at area schools.

"We are running all over the place. We are running buses that are half or less full. So if we do these clusters, these HUBs, we can fill these buses up and run fewer buses and fewer miles," said HISD Spokesperson Norm Uhl.

District officials want to know what parents think. There will be a series of meetings to talk about this issue. The first two are tonight. One is at Pershing Middle School at 5pm for the west region and the other is a district wide meeting at Westbury High School at 6:30pm.

Other meetings are set for throughout December. Here is a list of the meetings scheduled:

District wide Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule

Regional Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule