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TRAILS Outdoor School to offer bus service for first time By Kevin Opsahl Dec 26, 2022 12:30 AM A A Braymon Franko, 10, plays piano during the grand opening of the TRAILS Outdoor School in November. [Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune] Never before have students from TRAILS Outdoor School had the chance to sing “the wheels on the bus go round and round” during a ride from their home to school and back. Starting Jan. 3, they will. The K-8 school, located at 158 Walker Ave., Ashland, will get the same opportunity as students from Ashland Middle School, right next door. The news of bus service, shared on TRAILS Facebook page this week, comes as the outdoor school celebrates its move from Lincoln School off Beach Street to long-awaited new digs next to AMS. “Everyone wanted to make this happen, and I’m so excited that it is,” said Principal Jennifer Parks of providing buses. Parks added that with TRAILS admission based on a lottery system, some families don’t even put an application in because they need a bus to take their children to school. “I think it’s a huge opportunity for any family, now, to say, ‘Is this school the right opportunity for my child?’” Parks said. “Transportation won’t be a barrier for them to apply.” To make bus transportation for TRAILS students possible, the district added a route and a driver. Not only that, the school will align its daily schedule with AMS. That means TRAILS will start at 8:40 a.m. and end at 3:05 p.m. Monday through Friday, with the exception of Wednesday. On that day, students will be in class from 8:40 a.m. to 1:50 p.m. “It can be difficult for families to be able to get their child in the middle of the day — most of us don’t end our workday in the middle of the afternoon,” Parks said. “(This will help our) students to be able to get to their home via bus or the YMCA for after-school care.” The effort to get transportation to TRAILS had been in the works for at least three years. That included a survey, which showed “overwhelming” support for buses, according to Parks. “This is something so many of us wanted for a very long time, and it is an exciting development,” Parks said. For years, TRAILS — formerly known as John Muir Outdoor School — was housed at the middle school, where Muir was a “choice school,” meaning students from anywhere in the district could attend if there was sufficient space. “The district did not have capacity to provide transportation across elementary attendance zones,” Ashland School District Superintendent Samuel Bogdanove explained. “It has been a long-standing goal to build capacity and offer transportation from any attendance zone to TRAILS.” Bogdanove said that while it “took some juggling” of the TRAILS start and end times to make bus transportation possible, TRAILS students from every elementary attendance zone can finally get on district transportation. “We recognized that transportation was a barrier we wanted to overcome from an equity perspective,” the superintendent wrote. TRAILS asked families to contact the district’s transportation director Stacey Cheshire at [email protected] if they have questions about bus service, or log on to ashland.k12.or.us/page/transportation for information on routes, drop off and pick up times. TRAILS’ addition of bus service comes as the outdoor school’s parent-teacher collective is raising funds for a new play space on campus. Some equipment has already arrived, but the group continues to explore what options are available and determine how much more money they need to raise. Reach reporter Kevin Opsahl at 541-776-4476 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @KevJourno.