“Three to a Seat”: Bar Harbor Grapples With After-School Safety Fix

Carrie Jones

Dec 05, 2025

BAR HARBOR—For years, Conners-Emerson students could count on a ride to the Y after school. Despite the needs of the school, that hasn’t happened since COVID.

Now, the Bar Harbor School Committee is hoping new town service agreements with the MDI YMCA, Jesup, and Island Explorer might bring that option back—and make after-school travel safer for everyone.

The bus to the YMCA from the Conners Emerson School was a staple for many years and its return has been a recurring discussion at school board meetings as well as all student safety as they get to and from school.

“We have to spend a lot of time talking about how they (students) are not going to get hit,” School Committee Chair Marie Yarborough had said in October.

Having the YMCA picking up the kids again would be the safest way to get the kids to the YMCA, she said.

Yarborough felt the MOU process was “an opportunity to appreciate and articulate” the value that the Y provides, but to also illustrate where there could be improvements.

For a few years, the school committee has been trying to get the Y to continue to use the bus the Y owns and use it to once again pick up students who were specifically going to its programs after school.

Both Principal Dr. Heather Weir Webster and Superintendent Mike Zboray have met with the YMCA.

The lack of a bus puts more pressure on school families who have to get their children to the nonprofit so that they can either have afterschool care or attend programs. The school itself doesn’t have much space for those students on the downtown bus routes.

“It was in the previous MOU with the Y that they would provide transportation,” Dr. Weir Webster said.

That was in 2013.

Finance Director Sarah Gilbert, who attended the meeting, said the service was still the current MOU.

Bus driver Kathy White, Dr Weir Webster said, tries to squeeze as many kids as she can on Bus C.

“That bus is frequently too full to get those kids to the Y safely,” Yarborough said.

Some kids walk, but that worries her and others because, she said, sometimes the piles of snow on the side of the road are taller than many of the students.

“We’re already three to a seat,” Dr. Weir Webster said.

The school has also rerouted the D bus for a couple of seats to transport students to the Jesup Memorial Library for its free programing.

Cited reasons for the bus not continuing have included staffing issues at the Y as well as broken vehicles.

“We are looking forward to working with the Bar Harbor Town Manager on developing an MOU which informs how the Y serves the community and the schools,” MDI Y CEO Ann Tikkanen told the Mount Desert Islander this week when the Islander said it “asked about the prospect of resuming the bus service.”

The Islander quotes Tikkanen as also saying, “We are excited about the opportunity to work more closely together, knowing too that we have a great working relationship with the high school and the district’s elementary schools.”

In April, when asked by the Bar Harbor Story, Tikkanen said, “Some time ago, our community Y had a school bus and we managed to have non-CDL staff drive the bus to and from Conners-Emerson for pickup. Today, we have a decommissioned small school bus in need of repair, and are about to rent a van just for the Y’s summer day camp program (which can safely be driven by summer camp counselors). The needs of the community and services the Y can provide continue to evolve. We have a good working relationship with all of the schools on MDI.”

The town council has agreed to allow Town Manager James Smith to create MOUs for three nonprofits to help detail the town’s expectations for its annual contributions. All of the nonprofits receive substantial sums from the town. The YMCA received approximately $180k.

In the last budget cycle, the YMCA had requested $200,000, up from $150,000, a 33% increase; the Jesup Memorial Library requested $312,756, a 3% increase from what it had received the year before; and the Island Explorer requested the same amount it had the year previously—$310,544.

Throughout the late summer, the MDI YMCA has been slowly unrolling what could potentially be a $13-million plan to expand and update its Park Street building and offerings. It presented the plan to the town council last month. The Y is on town property on Park Street.

Yarborough suggested someone on the school committee meet with the town manager to get it on the radar about its need for when Smith negotiates the service agreement.

Gilbert said that those MOUs or service agreements should be in place by March, which is necessary for the budget process. She suggested sending a letter to the town manager, who would then share the need with the council.

The town council has also passed a resolve to adopt a vision-zero goal for roadway safety.

The concept, introduced by Staff Planner Hailey Bondy at the council’s meeting in early August, commits the town to creating a town-wide plan with a goal of having no traffic fatalities or severe injuries in the next ten years. It is part of the Safe Streets for All initiative, for which the town has received federal support.

The Safe Streets project is meant to make everyone safer in town and is driving forward with a draft plan currently being reviewed by staff and an expectation that the plan will be put before the town council and public and finalized by the estimated December 2025 deadline.

Concerns about sidewalks and street safety have quietly been made in committee and board discussions, both formal and informal, in the last few years. The bus issue with the YMCA and school has also been talked about multiple times before. The school also has worked with its School Resource Officer Elias Burne about teaching students how to safely walk to and from school.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Bar Harbor School Board Continues to Hope YMCA Will Reestablish After-School Route

Bar Harbor Restructures Town Funding Process for YMCA, Library, and Island Explorer

Getting The Kids There . . . Safely