BROCKVILLE – Longer bus trips, fewer bus stops, and more students walking to school is in store by 2027 due to changes in provincial transportation funding.
Student Transportation of Eastern Ontario, the bus consortium owned by the Upper Canada District School Board and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario, is facing a nearly $12 million funding shortfall as of the 2027-28 school year officials warn.
“We are looking at a significant gap,” said STEO General Manager Janet Murray at the February 11 UCDSB trustee board meeting. “That funding formula is based on the desire of the ministry to have uniform levels of service across the province. STEO’s service levels are more generous in many, many, cases than those the ministry has stipulated.”
Historically, the province funded school boards for transportation on a per student basis. That funding has changed to a per bus basis. Since 2023-24, there has been transitional funding in place while school boards work to adapt to the new funding model.
STEO’s current bus service standards are different than the provincial standard. All school boards must realign to the ministry standards. Student walk distance to local schools are also far shorter than the provincial standard. What this means is that by 2027-28, both the UCDSB and CDSBEO will have to increase their walking distance for secondary school students to 3.2 kilometres, and increase maximum one-way bus travel times to 75 minutes for elementary students, and 90 minutes for secondary students. Currently, STEO’s policy is to aim for no more than three per cent of students to have a bus travel time of more than 60 minutes.
Since last fall, STEO has been working with consultants to try to make current routes work within the new funding formula. Even with that work, the system will have an $11.9 million shortfall.
Some potential changes to current service, including increased bus travel times, increased walk distances, changes to some route/vehicles, and working with city transit companies in Brockville and Cornwall would only find $3.9 million in savings — leaving an $8 million deficit that the boards would have to cover. Due to the size of the two boards that own the consortium, that works out to approximately two-thirds for the UCDSB ($5.3 million) and one third for the CDSBEO ($2.7 million).
The two boards aligned their school timetables, start times, and routes to make their operations as lean as possible under the per student funding.
“Taking buses off the roads through efficiencies, it reduces your expense. But because the new funding model is generated on how many buses are on the road, every time you take a bus off you lose funding and the expense,” Chief Business Officer Jeremy Hobbs told the board, saying the funding model is counter-intuitive.
“It actually pays you to be less efficient. We don’t need more buses to transport the kids we’ve got but nonetheless we are faced with the prospect of having to put more buses on the road because it generates more funding.”
He added that in the absence of political changes or additional ministry funding, the board will have to cover their part of the shortfall from other parts of the board’s operational budget.
Ward 8 (Cornwall) trustee David McDonald said in making changes to service levels, the board has to look at the number of students affected.
“We can save almost a million dollars if we implement Ministry of Education thresholds but it impacts 720 kids,” McDonald said. McDonald serves on the board of directors for STEO as well. “If we put efficiencies in place in and around transfer buses, we save $400,000 but it impacts 18,000 kids.”
He said these were the “unintended consequences” of the ministry funding changes.
Murray told the trustees to expect to see requests for possible changes to be presented in Fall 2026.
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