Schools consider Metro fare increase

Depending on the perspective, King County's proposal to raise Metro bus fares for students in 2011 is either a disaster, or else it's no big deal.

The Bellevue School District says the 33 percent increase comes at the expense of school budgets and jeopardizes a popular program that helps kids learn to use mass transit without having to rely on Mom, Dad or the family car.

But the Seattle school district, with the most number of student Metro bus riders, expects a change in the state transportation-funding formula will make up the cost difference.

Which district is right?

"I think you have an optimist in Seattle and a skeptic over in Bellevue," said Allan Jones, director of pupil transportation for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction's (OSPI) office.

The Metro bus-fare increase is part of King County Executive Kurt Triplett's proposed 2010 budget. Under the proposal, all Metro fares — not just student fares — would increase by 25 cents in January 2011.

Nearly 10,000 students in the Seattle, Bellevue, Lake Washington and Mercer Island school districts, most of them in high school, are given a Metro monthly pass, which costs the districts $27 per student; under the proposal, that would increase to $36 per student.

The money would have to come out of school-district coffers. So while a fare increase would help King County balance its budget, it would hurt school districts trying to balance theirs. And at $36 a pass, it would be cheaper for Bellevue to return to yellow school buses on all its routes, said Bellevue transportation manager Mike Anderson.

Dropping Metro would particularly hurt students at Bellevue's International School, district officials say. Because the school is open to students across the entire district, Metro buses are the only logical way to get kids to the school. Without Metro, International School students may need to find, and pay for, their own way to and from school.

That will be difficult on students like Chris Evans, 16, a junior, who doesn't have the money to buy his own car, or Hedley Nelson, a 16-year-old sophomore whose mom is single. "I have no idea what we would do," she said. "She can't get off work before the school day is over."

Seattle, meanwhile, is counting on a change in the state-funding formula that would fully pay for transportation costs, said Seattle schools transportation manager Tom Bishop.

That change in the transportation formula, part of a larger change in basic education funding that was approved by the Legislature earlier this year, is expected to take place in the 2013-14 school year, although OSPI is pushing for transportation funding to happen even earlier, in the 2011-12 school year, Jones said.

Fully funding student transportation statewide would cost an extra $150 million a year, Jones said. Anderson, of Bellevue, is not counting on the money. "That's all conjecture," he said. "Nothing's been finalized. Nothing's been changed."

Anderson said one of the hardest things to swallow is the rate of increase. If approved, monthly bus passes for students would have gone up 100 percent in three years — from $18 last year to $36 in 2011.

"They don't raise it by three cents, they raise it by 25 cents," said Todd Kelsay, director of transportation for the Mercer Island School District, which also is considering dropping Metro for high-school routes and using yellow school buses.

Anderson said if Bellevue pulls out of the Metro service, it will take with it about $800,000 the district pays Metro annually for both bus passes and 10 supplemental bus routes, because Metro's regular routes don't reach certain neighborhoods where students live. Mercer Island also pays for several supplemental routes. Those routes are open to adult riders, too.

Seattle's Bishop said the impact on Seattle's budget is not as great because Seattle doesn't pay for supplemental routes.

Those who like the student Metro program say the passes not only give students freedom to ride for free — they cover an unlimited number of rides — but also help teach kids how to get from place to place on mass transit.

"We're growing a generation of public-transportation users," said Peter Bang-Knudsen, principal of the International School, where about 400 students receive Metro passes.

Shehab Heddaya, a 16-year-old junior at the International School, often takes the bus to the Bellevue branch of the King County Library after school to study. This summer, he took Metro to the University of Washington for a research project. "It gives you a comfort with the community," he said. "It opens up a lot of doors."

Marianne Heywood, a parent who has three children at the International School, says dropping Metro would worsen traffic dramatically in the neighborhood. "Every kid on those buses means one less car on the road," she said.

"Are these buses not standing-room only?" Heywood asked. "What does that say? None of this makes sense at all."

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com