Ossining Union Free School District ___________________________________________________ 400 Executive Blvd, Ossining, New York 10562 Tel: (914) 941-7700 Fax: (914) 941-7291 [email protected] www.OssiningUFSD.org James J. Minihan Supervisor of Transportation

NEW PRACTICE REGARDING LATE REQUESTS FOR TRANSPORTATION CHANGES Every year the Transportation Department gets to work on the next school years bus runs in midMay. It takes the department three (3) months to make transportation arrangements for all of Ossining’s eligible riders. When developing bus runs, the department takes into consideration; safety, efficiency, capacity and length of time on the bus. Every year the Transportation Departments receives hundreds of requests from families to make changes to their transportation arrangements. These changes range from families moving, change of a baby sitter or change in daycare providers. The Department makes every effort to accommodate those requests, but often times those changes are at the expense of families who have made all of their arrangements on time. Those late requests often result in the overloading of buses necessitating the need to move stops off of existing routes to make room and then putting those stops on other runs. In short, all the work that was done three months prior, and then sent to parents for the start of school is no longer accurate. Bus runs become more crowded and/or longer than originally planned. Every year the Transportation Department sets an August deadline for the requests for changes. This year’s deadline is Friday August 11, 2017. This is the latest possible date that the Department can receive a request and have it in place for the start of school. Any request received after that date won’t be in place for the start of school, and won’t be in place until Monday September 18, 2017. However this year we will be handling late requests differently. This year late requests will be accommodated on a “first come first served” basis. This means we will accommodate late requests up until a bus is filled to capacity. Once a bus is filled to capacity no further requests will be honored until there is room on the bus. The Department will no longer be taking extraordinary measures to accommodate late request. It just isn’t fair to the families who have made all of their arrangements on time and then make plans based on the information we send them in August regarding their child bus stop times. When talking to your school families and communities; please stress the importance to them that if they want to make any changes to their child’s transportation to please do so as soon as they can but certainly by no later than August 11, 2017. If they have any questions to please contact the Transportation Department at 914-941-7700 Thank you