HOWLAND — The upcoming school year is still two months away, and the district is hoping to have its transportation plans ironed out before then, the Howland Board of Education learned Monday.

Superintendent Kevin Spicher reiterated how pleased school officials were with Charles Mendenhall, the district’s transportation supervisor.

“We’re really appreciative of the way he’s come in and really worked to bring together some of the things and needs that we have,” Spicher said. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s a retired state trooper, because that’s really helped with our bus inspections, and him managing people before.”

Spicher said work continues with optimizing Transfinder, the school bus routing software taking the place of Versatrans, which was previously in place.

Spicher said officials have made a request to try and abbreviate Howland Glen and Howland Primary schools’ routes, to try and bring times down to where students could be released up to 15 minutes earlier, so kids can get home.

Spicher said he and Mendenhall were having a meeting with Transfinder representatives on Tuesday to solidify the adjustments, noting the district already has bus stops in place, which should help them out.

“What we don’t want to do is make it a waiting game, and then it’s too late to try and share with our parents that we’re going to bump up the school day for those primary grade levels late in the summer,” Spicher said.

Spicher expressed the belief that school officials should be able to move those buildings up in time, because of no longer having driveway-to-driveway stops the district previously had in place.

“They’re also looking at efficiency ratings as well, which is a whole conglomerate of data points — how long it takes to be at each stop and things like that,” Spicher said.

Spicher said officials remain “cautiously optimistic” that they’ll be able to make the change happen, but he plans to keep the board updated.

Spicher said he could provide the numbers on how much the district was saving by utilizing stops, but noted the district would be the only school system around using driveway-to-driveway stops if it chose to go back.

“It’s significant, and we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars in wear and tear, which really is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in wear and tear,” Spicher said. “We are still one of the few school systems that still have a three-tier bus route system.”

“In other words, you go out three times, but we were also running with driveway-to-driveway. So that is an incredibly expensive venture for the Howland schools — especially being heavily locally funded — when we don’t get those dollars the other schools might.”

Spicher said reverting to the old system would be a “very difficult” thing to even consider, knowing the uncertainty surrounding education at the state level in the upcoming years.

“It was an incredible amount of fuel, and fuel is outrageously expensive right now, because you’re going from making 30-plus stops to five,” Spicher said. “Wear and tear on the brakes, the calipers, the drive shafts — all of that is a significant part of it too as well, and the state will tell you it’s a safer methodology.”

In the case that the elementary schools end classes 15 minutes earlier, Spicher said the day will also begin 15 minutes earlier, ensuring there’s no change.

“It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if we are late in the game — if we are just cutting the end of the day off,” Spicher said. “But because we’re bumping the whole day up, I want to make sure that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to put it out there.”

Spicher said if officials sense a potential controversy, they may put a majority survey out to learn parents’ values regarding school transportation.