Catholic board puts brakes on funding city buses for students

The Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board has put the brakes on an idea to offer bus transportation to all high school students.

Ward 1 and 10 trustee Fulvio Valentinis brought forward a notice of motion for the board and transportation consortium to look at funding city buses for all high school students.

The motion was not approved Tuesday night.

Only Catholic high school students who live in the County are bused to school, with no charge to families.

Valentinis wanted the board to consider buying passes from Transit Windsor at a reduced cost.

The estimated cost was $400,000 a year.

The Chair of the School Board, Barb Holland, says "we simply cannot afford that cost regardless of what it is."

With limited education funding, Holland would prefer to spend money on programming – rather than getting a student to the classroom “because those are programs that they'll learn from and they'll be able to use in their life.”