To the Editor:

The transportation analysis in the fourth update to the Canton/Postdam feasibility study states that “the vast majority of students would see little change in time spent on the bus in a merged district.” However, the only support the study offers for this surprising claim is that 90 percent of students in the merged district will continue to have bus rides of between 10 and 45 minutes.

Even if true, that does not remotely suggest that most students won’t have much longer bus rides after a merger than before. How many students currently spend anywhere near 45 minutes on the bus? How many will spend close to 45 minutes on the bus after the merger? The vast majority of students could double or triple their time on the bus, without that contradicting the study’s factoid about 10 to 45 minute bus rides. Residents of Potsdam and Canton need to be informed how much the average time spent on the bus can be expected to change if the schools merge.

Will this average double? Will it triple? The failure of the merger study to provide genuinely informative data on this issue raises real questions about its credibility. It purports to be an unbiased accounting of the advantages and disadvantages of the merger, but it does not reflect a good faith effort to address the issue of longer bus rides.

If the study does not give an honest and informative accounting of something as obvious as the fact that students would spend much more time on the bus after a merger, why should we trust any of its many other claims about the merger’s benefits?

Tim Murphy

Potsdam