The Jefferson City School District will add four buses to smooth out schedules for middle and high school students beginning after the holiday break.
The change will cost the district $100,000 from January through May, which will be covered by state transportation funding, said Jason Hoffman, JC Schools chief financial and operations officer.
Four buses through First Student's bus transportation service will cost $200,000 annually, Hoffman told the Board of Education in November.
Additional fees will also come from fuel costs, Hoffman said.
The district approved the 2019-20 school year bus routes last October. By switching to two-tier routes with most buses in August, the district saved $150,000 in transportation costs and improved the routes, Hoffman said.
Spending that savings to add the four buses will make routes even better, he added.
"Elementary is going great," Hoffman said. "When we're doing our rounding at the buildings, the elementary can't say enough good things about how nice it is for them to have their buses there early in the morning and when they leave school. Secondary, it's working better, but it's still not as good as we would like it to be."
JC Schools runs 106 First Student buses, according to the approved route numbers. Beginning Jan. 6, two additional buses will transport high school students and two more will transport middle school students.
Currently, at dismissal, buses pick up high school students at 3:40 p.m. and add middle school students to the same buses at 3:50 p.m.
The change gets sixth-graders off buses with seniors and will get high school students dropped off about 15 minutes earlier, Hoffman said.
Extra buses are also needed to assist with overcrowding and travel for students outside city limits.
"The reason we need more buses is we just have so many students living on the extreme," Hoffman said. "A bus to Tebbetts, we can only put 20 kids on a bus, and it's still an 80-minute route just because you're traveling so far."
The exact number of students on each bus was not available.
The number of students on each bus will decrease after the change takes place, Hoffman said.