Money allotted for bus service in BBP District

The Bayport-Blue Point school board adopted the proposed $76.9 million budget for the 2021-2022 school year to be put up to a vote by the community on May 18. The budget, if passed by community members, would include a $91,595 allotment towards transportation, specifically expanded bus service for additional students as the busing requirement would go down from 1.23 miles to 1.15 miles (K-5) from 2 miles to 1.8 miles (middle school, high school).

In mid-April, a flyer was posted in a Blue Point community Facebook page implying that the increased busing would do away with the much-debated Princeton Plan implementation.

Albeit referred to as “school configuration” in formal discussions at board meetings, the community did voice its opinion against the clustering of grades to individual schools (K-2 students from the entire district would all go to one building and grades 3-5 would go to another), often attributed to ideas set forth in the Princeton Plan.

The flyer caused some uproar from community members, as both increased busing and school configurations are hot-button issues in Bayport-Blue Point.

BBP school superintendent Dr. Timothy Hearney, upon hearing this information, made a point to address the issue at the April 15 emergency board meeting.

In his statement, he explained that since last January, when a presentation was made by the enrollment committee about various school configurations for this current school year, much, if not all efforts to learn more about the possibility of enacting the grade configuration had been put on hold following the pandemic.

The last action was a follow-up in February 2020, where Dr. Hearney was granted funding to have more investigation done by the demographer.

In January of this year, the enrollment committee met again and stated they had nothing to put together for the board at that time.