Students will need to pay for each time they ride the school bus
The Douglas Country, Colorado school board will install a new electronic card reader system onto the districts school buses, as the district imposes a 50-cent, one-way fee for students who take the bus to school.
The fee is one of several that the school board has proposed for the upcoming school year, as the district deals with a $26 million budget shortfall.
The Highlands Ranch-Herald says the system, which will track students by using a plastic ID card embedded with an RFID chip, will cost the district $319,000.
But if all the district’s 17,000 riders continue to take the bus, the paper says the system could raise an addition $2.9 million in revenue.
Before proposing the system, school officials sent parents a survey, asking if they would be willing to pay to have their children ride the bus. The Highlands Ranch-Herald says more than 50 percent said yes.
Denver’s 9News says the district won’t see any relief next year either, and that officials are warning of even tougher budget cuts for the 2011-12 school year.
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