Without district bus, parents buy their own

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When Ty Haguewood learned his first-grader would not get bus service to her Cache County school, he began looking for a bigger ride to fit a neighborhood carpool.

He didn't want a Suburban or a mini-van: He went to eBay and typed "school bus."

Now, 82 students ride Haguewood's yellow bus to Sunrise Elementary in Smithfield. The bus is a joint venture with fellow parent Bruce Jones. But launching a bus service required the support of a neighborhood.

"If it wasn't for all the neighborhood, parents joining forces and all doing it together we couldn't have done it," Haguewood says. "We made a commitment to make sure we had enough [community] response before we bought the bus."

Parents pay a $206 yearly fee per child to ride the bus to and from school — that averages out to 57 cents per trip.

"At first, I didn't think it could be done. Then we ran the numbers and it made sense," Jones says. "It was cheaper for everybody to pool their resources all together."

Haguewood and Jones bought the bus at a Box Elder School District auction for about $6,000. As Smithfield Bus LLC, they cover insurance, maintenance, diesel fuel and a part-time driver, who also is a parent.

Haguewood, a 34-year-old real estate agent, serves as the substitute driver. He worked as a bus driver for Provo School District when he was a student at Brigham Young University and has maintained his commercial driver license since.

This year, a boundary reconfiguration made Sunrise one of two "walking" elementaries with no bus service in Cache district this year. That means that all families live within 1.5 miles of the school so no students qualify for state-funded bus service.

Haguewood's neighborhood is near the 1.5-mile limit. The walking route to school requires crossing busy streets and navigating stretches with no sidewalks.

"We would not be letting [our fourth-grade daughter] ride her bike or walk to school. No way," says Shanna Knowles. "Now we have a school bus, and it's awesome. The kids love it. The parents love it, too."

Knowles says the annual fee is worth the time and gas she saves by not having to make regular trips to school. Plus, she doesn't have to remember when it's her turn to drive the car pool — the bus driver handles that every day.

"These parents came up with a pretty good method of solving their own issues when they realized we just were not in a position to help them out," says Cache Superintendent Steven Norton.

State transportation funds for school districts have been declining, Norton says. The district used to be able to offer additional busing, for a fee, to neighborhoods that did not qualify for state funds. But Cache does not have any buses to spare.

Two years ago, the state stopped sending districts money to buy new buses, says Murrell Martin, the state Office of Education's pupil transportation specialist. Overall, he says, the state's subsidy of to-and-from busing for districts has dropped from 83 percent three years ago to 68 percent in 2009-10.

Knowles says some Sunrise students felt like they would be missing an important rite of passage to being a "big kid" without a school bus. The bus also gives kids a chance to socialize with other Sunrise students who may not be in their classes at school.

Esterlee Molyneux, who has two Sunrise students, says finding a way to get kids to school without a district bus was "stressful" for many parents, especially families like her own in which both parents work.

"This experience has been very empowering," she says. "We often get into the mindset that everything is the school's responsibility. … But sometimes when you have a problem, you need to try to be creative and come up with a solution on your own."

She says parents have had to come together to secure the ridership necessary to support a bus. They also have worked out issues such as bus stops and where to park the yellow behemoth at night.

"To have someone say, 'We want to buy a school bus, do you want to join?' " Molyneux says, "it's also making the impossible feel possible."

rwinters@sltrib.com —