SCHEDULE SWAP'S UNAVOIDABLE TRUTH

By Mike Boslet

I COULDN’T SHED A TEAR FOR THE PARENTS AND students angered over the schedule swap Orange County middle and high schools will implement next month. My Edgewater-bound
eldest daughter was not happy with the change either, making my approval of it as unpopular at home as it likely will be among many readers.
Honestly, I do empathize with the parents and students who are worried about how the change will impact their schedules and lives.
Obviously it will affect routines that were put in place to accommodate everything from parents’ work schedules to students’ after-school jobs and activities to child-care arrangements. This flip in times, with middle schoolers in school from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and high school students in class from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., affects about 84,000 students and their parents. I don’t doubt that the change will inconvenience a lot of people. But the inconvenient truth is that high fuel costs have made school buses painfully expensive to operate.

You don’t have to be a Harvard MBA to figure out the economic impact of having to spend more money to provide a service—in this case school bus transportation—while not being able to pass along the
added expenses to customers. And, on top of absorbing the higher costs of diesel fuel, the Orange County school system has taken a $70 million hit in funding. Teaching and administrative jobs were cut,
programs eliminated, utility use reduced, yadda, yadda, yadda. All the usual suspects came under Superintendent Ronald Blocker’s knife without so much as a whimper of protest until he went after the one expense that has put a crimp in nearly everyone’s lives—fuel. By swapping schedules, the school district can streamline its use of buses, eliminating 37 of them. The projected savings of parking the
buses is $6 million next year and $2.3 million in following years. Now take a minute (but it won’t take that long) to consider how you have adjusted your driving habits in particular and your way of life in
general to cope with the exorbitant cost of fuel. Are you mapping out your weekend errand runs to get the most done in the shortest distance? Have you cut back on other expenses, such as dining out and
going to theme parks, movies and the beach, because your increased gas expenses have eaten into your discretionary spending? Have you ridden a bike or walked instead of jumping in your car to travel a few blocks? Have you given serious thought to downsizing your lifestyle, like dumping the SUV and getting a fuel-efficient hybrid, for example, to adapt to the new reality of spending more money to drive fewer miles? And I’ll bet you never thought you’d feel nostalgic for $3-a-gallon gas.

Now think about what has happened to the Orange County school system. From November 2007 to May 29, 2008, it went from paying $2.10 for a gallon of diesel to $4.33. It had budgeted $6.5 million for
fuel in 2007-08, but Nick Gledich, the district’s chief operations officer, told me in late May that he expected to finish the school year $3.5 million over budget. Next year he budgeted $13 million for fuel. If the school system were a private business, it would have drastically cut services and passed along higher costs and surcharges to customers, as the airlines have done to stay alive. Well, we know that’s not going to happen. In fact, public school systems statewide have had to cut budgets because of funding shortfalls due to the economy. And come November, Florida voters could make matters much worse if 60 percent of them approve Amendment 5, a measure that purportedly would offset property tax cuts with new consumption-style sales taxes. If it passes, our kids may be thumbing rides to school.

When the school board narrowly approved the schedule swap in May, Blocker commented that it may be a temporary solution, lasting two years. But I don’t think he really believes that.

The housing market has a few more painful years ahead of it, and the fuel predicament we’re all in isn’t going to get better—ever. Prices may stabilize but they aren’t going to fall to the point that you don’t
need a second mortgage to take the Escalade out for a spin. Then there’s the potential upside to the swap, the one scenario you don’t hear much about—improved student performance.

If high school students perform better with later class times, as research suggests, grades of Orange County schools could go up. If they do, the flip is forever.

Additional articles along with the remainder of this excerpt can be found in the current issue of Orlando Magazine.