OTISFIELD — Oxford Hills School Superintendent Rick Colpitts listened Monday night to parents’ questions and concerns about busing students from all grades together.

Currently, elementary students are bused together to and from their schools, and middle and high school students are bused separately to theirs.

The district’s Board of Directors gave school officials the go-ahead Feb. 7 to look into having students of all ages ride together to help fill an estimated $1.2 million to $2 million budget gap in the fiscal year that begins July 1. The move would save an estimated $393,000.

Monday night’s meeting at Otisfield Central School was the last in a series to gather information and get feedback from parents, bus drivers and others in the district’s eight towns.

Colpitts said questions from parents and others are essentially the same in each of the towns.

“The feedback is not really different,” he said. “All the parents are saying, ‘I’m concerned about my young child riding the bus with these big kids.’”

He told them that officials in other districts that have switched to one run have said inappropriate behavior and language are not issues or have not increased because of the change.

Other issues that were raised Monday by the more than two dozen parents were the reduction of hours for bus drivers, the extended school day by 30 minutes for elementary schoolchildren and monitoring children as they wait for buses.

“It’s a concept. It’s an idea,” Colpitts said, stressing he would not recommend the move if there was not a significant financial savings over the long term.

Oxford Hills has 57 bus routes that travel a total of 777,000 miles per year. If all students were bused together, there would be 34 runs that would travel a total of 527,000 miles a year. The one-run system would be fully reimbursed by the state, as opposed to the current two-run system that is only partially funded, Colpitts said.

“We’ll do every effort to do what’s best for your kids,” Director Don Gouin told parents Monday night. He and Director Thomas Moore of Otisfield, who also attended the meeting, are members of the Operations Committee, which will receive Colpitts’ recommendation in April.

The committee will make a recommendation to the full Board of Directors, which will make the final decision.

“We have to balance what you can afford to pay with what’s best for the kids,” Gouin said. “It’s a tough problem.”

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