LCPS offering prizes to students who ride the bus to school
The Las Cruces Public School District is offering prizes to students who ride the bus this Thursday in an effort to increase ridership and state funding for transportation.
The district is working with its school bus contractor, STS of New Mexico, to offer more than $3,000 worth of prizes to students who ride the bus December 1 and February 8. Those are the only two days a year the state looks at ridership to determine funding.
Raffle prizes include flat screen televisions, drones and tablets. The items were provided by STS.
About 8,500 students hop on school buses every day in Las Cruces, but the district says every year state funding decreases tremendously. Transportation cost taxpayers more than $5 million this year, $1.8 million of that came from the district’s operational budget.
“We’re just not getting enough money from the state to run our buses,” LCPS Transportation Director David Del Torro said. “So we’re having to offset the cost and that money we’re using from district funds is money that could be used at the campuses.”
Officials say that’s why they came up with the “ride the bus to school” initiative.
“There’s no telling how many kids that could ride the bus, don’t on that particular day for whatever reason,” STS NM General Manager Van Wamel said. “Sick or on vacation for any number of reasons, they just don’t ride the bus. We don’t get to count them, so just counting two days is pretty unfair.”
In order to be eligible for all the prizes, you have to be a registered bus rider, ride the bus at least once on December 1, ride your assigned bus and be in “good standing” as a bus rider.
The district anticipates a big increase in ridership Thursday. They even have overflow buses up and ready.
But is this initiative rigging the numbers?
Del Torro says, no.
“We’re not trying to rig the numbers we’re trying to increase the ridership on this particular day because this is the day the state of New Mexico counts for ridership for funding purposes.”
ABC-7 reached out to the New Mexico Department of Public Education and is still waiting for comment.
