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School will be over in a week and district officials still can’t tell parents how their kids will get to and from school next year.

“This is a classic case of the adults can’t figure it out and the students are going to suffer,” Board of Education member Jim Williams said Tuesday during a committee meeting where members had hoped to resolve the transportation issue.

Faced with a $17 million shortfall for student transportation services, the state Department of Education has been struggling to figure out how to keep buses running and meet contract requirements without harming academic programs.

On Tuesday, district officials suggested the greatest savings might come from leasing buses to contractors, according to internal documents. Officials are also considering cutting routes, offering one statewide contract and staggering school schedules along with about three dozen other possibilities, according to a list given to the board.

But school officials only touched on this possible solution to help plug the budget hole. The spent more time discussing the controversial issue behind closed doors than it did in open session.

Williams told colleagues that it’s too easy to blame the Legislature for the problem. In fact, he pointed out, the district has known about the problem for years and has been unable to control rising transportation costs.

“I do not support any route reduction at all unless it is financially driven,” Williams said. “The board should direct the department to find the money to get the kids to school.”

State lawmakers have again underfunded the school bus budget because they said the department has failed to rein in contract costs that have inexplicably skyrocketed in recent years. The department said it needed $42 million in state funds to get students to and from school next year; the .

The board expects to decide at its June 5 meeting what bus routes to suspend and any other actions necessary to close the gap. The department plans to send a letter home with students before summer break so parents have a heads up that cuts are coming.

Due to a legislative proviso and fewer federal funds to repurpose, the department can’t shuffle money between accounts as easily this time around as it has in the past. School officials have said there is also simply less fat to cut due to consecutive years of budget reductions.

So despite the DOE’s nearly $2 billion overall budget, finding an extra $17 million for student transportation has proven challenging, department officials said.

And while school officials continue to work on finding a solution that minimizes the impact on kids, they don’t seem much closer than they were March 30 when Assistant Superintendent Randy Moore presented almost three dozen ways to achieve the savings.

Only a couple new items were added in his report Tuesday, neither of which offered any short-term savings. One action recommends improving data quality and the other suggests hiring a consultant to review the department’s current transportation operations and recommend improvements. The department is moving forward on both.

DOE accountants told the board that there may be up to $7 million in Department of Defense and impact aid money that could help make up the bus services shortfall, but those funds currently flow through an account that the Legislature told them they can’t touch.

To complicate the matter further, Moore reiterated that eliminating routes means paying vendors an “idle bus” fee for terminating the contracts early. So the savings isn’t dollar-for-dollar because of these one-time hits.

The cost of school transportation has jumped from $47 million in 2007 to some $75 million this year. Civil Beat has been investigating the soaring costs in its Taken for a Ride series, which documented costs climbing as bus companies abruptly quit bidding against each other.

Outside the meeting, Moore said the biggest dollar savings would come from staggering school start times, which would mean fewer buses would be needed. The department wants to do this despite expected push-back from parents and teachers, but Moore said a definitive answer would be unlikely by June 5.

Board Chair Don Horner encouraged Moore during the meeting to explore staggered start times as a possibility for next school year.

“I know that the window’s short,” Horner said. “We need to retain as much service as humanly possible.”

If the state leased the buses, Moore said this would, in theory, boost competition among contractors. He said the department would lease the buses, then sub-lease them to the contractors.

“It’d be zero net cost to us,” he said.

Moore suggested the district needs to pick a direction and stick to it.

Leasing buses would be an option included in the bidding process, Moore said.

The department estimates leasing would bring an annual savings of between $12 million and $15 million to be achieved incrementally as existing contracts are replaced with new ones. The timetable would be starting with contracts effective July 1, 2013, meaning the department would need to award the bids by Dec. 31.

Moore’s Tuesday memo to Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi says as of May 11, the department is “strongly leaning in this direction.”

DOE officials are meeting with complex area superintendents next week to analyze which bus routes should be cut, based on a list of criteria for evaluating them.

“It will come down to a route-by-route evaluation,” Matayoshi told the board. “It can’t be done with a broad brush, even by complex area.”