OXFORD – Oxford Hills School District Superintendent Rick Colpitts told directors Monday that the Aspire Higher program will be expanded this year to a monthlong celebration.

The program traditionally includes an Aspire Higher parade of students on Homecoming Weekend each fall and the distribution of scholarships. It will now be a four-week program, including in-school activities and a communitywide celebration that culminates in the distribution of some 60 college scholarships.

Each year students who walk in the Aspire Higher parade are eligible to enter a drawing for a $100 scholarship.

“We’re pretty excited about that,” Colpitts said.

In other school board business, Colpitts announced that new after-school activity bus routes have been developed and will be distributed shortly. They will go into effect Oct. 3.

Seven bus routes were cut from last year’s schedule to save $110,000 in this year’s school budget. The change has affected after-school bus runs.

Although the original idea was to have only one drop-off point for students using the after-school bus in each of the district’s eight towns, Colpitts said recently that school officials were trying to work out a schedule where “kids may get close to home but not necessarily at their home.”

Previously, students were dropped off at their door.

There are now four activity buses running Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Each will drop off students as close to a student’s home or intersecting road as long as the stop is safe, Colpitts said.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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