Students enrolled in Cranbrook’s Choice Education Programs are being unfairly denied access to a public, tax-funded service: school buses. This denial puts the safety of children at risk and dramatically impacts families and our community daily in many ways. 

Safety

• According to Transport Canada, children are 80x more likely to arrive safely at school when taking a school bus than using any other means of transportation. In fact, in 2021, there were 50x more fatalities reported in the Southern Interior region alone than among school bus occupants in the entire country. 
• A Provincial road safety report found that the Southern Interior is “the most deadly region of the province with about one-third of all motor vehicle-related fatalities.” The City of Cranbrook alone ranks 6th highest in the entire region for crashes. 
• Traffic congestion on our roads, highways, and around schools has been cited as a point of concern by the Province and the Public School Board. Allowing all children access to public school buses would eliminate a minimum of 20 vehicles from this congestion by using an already established system. 
• The Public School Board has acknowledged children's risk when travelling our roads and highways through advocacy letters to the provincial and local governments, requesting other agencies install more signs, crosswalks, and lights. However, for years, they have not been willing to consider a measure that would immediately improve safety with little impact on School District No. 5 itself: allowing children access to public school buses. 

Environment 

• Parents forced to drive their children to KCA & St. Mary’s schools drive an estimated combined total of 1,080km daily. This effectively doubles the impact of the entire Cranbrook public school bus fleet.
•  Over the 190-day school year, parents drive 205,200km, contributing approximately an additional 57.6 metric tons of CO2 to our atmosphere. This is the equivalent of 64,521lbs of coal burned or the total energy used by over 7 homes every year. 
• SD5 already has an established school bus program that includes 2 electric school buses. Allowing all children access to public school buses would drastically reduce or eliminate entirely these additional emissions. 

Justice 

• Choice Education Programs, such as KCA and St. Mary’s, receive half of the funding public schools receive and are required to follow the same educational standards. Yet, these schools are denied access to a public service that is extended to every other student in the district. 
• Despite paying the same taxes as every other family and receiving half of the tax-funded grants that public schools receive, families are being denied access to a service they are paying for with their tax dollars. 
• The Public School Board did at one point allow students from KCA and St. Mary’s access to public school buses but were denied access to this service due to financial constraints about 10 years ago. However, in the last 15 years, the Public School Board has consistently spent only 3% of their budget on the entire busing program, which includes the Elk Valley. This means that removing Choice Education students from public buses made no difference to SD5’s budget. 
• SD5’s policies state that “the district endeavours to provide a safe, efficient, inclusive, and cost-effective system of school bus transportation for families.” Since the only families being denied access to this system are those who chose to enroll their children in faith-based education, who is the Board being inclusive of? 

This decision to bar children's access to a publicly funded service has dramatically impacted the lives of many families and their support networks. Here are stories of just a few that we’ve heard from. 

“I help another family by carpooling their children as well as my own to and from school each day. She was on the brink of closing her business due to the fact that she didn’t have a ride for her kids. But this does shorten my work to only 5.5 hours a day. I am self-employed and have been able to adjust my workload accordingly, but it has been at a cost to our personal finances. If it wasn’t for a spouse who works extra hours, I don’t know how we would be able to get our kids to school while maintaining a livable income.”

“I spend two hours a day driving the boys to school; it’s a lot of time. Gas is expensive! And when the roads are bad in winter, there are safety concerns, and it becomes even more time-consuming.”

“I rely on 3 different family members to get my kids to school. My sister has had to completely rearrange her work schedule to help us out so that I can still care for her 2 kids. Last year, there were 6 fatalities on the same route we drive every day to get the girls to school. But meanwhile, the school bus drives past our house and our school practically empty every single day. It’s not right that my entire family has to be exposed to such risk and such hassle for nothing.”

We have requested that the School District No. 5 Board of Education amend their policies and procedures to allow children from Kootenay Christian Academy and St. Mary’s Catholic School equitable access to publicly funded school buses. 

We believe all children should have equitable access to the safest mode of school transportation possible. The most environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and logical way to do this is to use the already established SD5 busing system to provide service to tax-paying families. Systems like this are already being used in other areas, such as the Nelson district. It is up to the SD5 Board of Education to do the right thing and change their policies. 

Help us show the SD5 Board of Education that the community cares about the safety of our families and our children and that this injustice can no longer stand. 

Thank you for your support!

Leah