![]() “For districts, it’s contrary to their thinking to give the money directly to kids’ families, but I think now, it might be a good idea.” Seeking Alternatives “There are a lot of redundancies in transportation costs,” said Roza, who’s consulted with district administrators on ways to cut costs. Some large urban districts, such as Dayton, Ohio, and Baltimore, have provided students with student passes to ride the public transit system to school.Īdministrators worry that if they cut off transportation entirely, parents would fail to get their kids to school every day.Ĭonsequently, there’s been a lot of bloat: Buses waste gas and time waiting on students who either regularly miss the bus or, alternatively, find their own ride to school. But a big, yellow school bus rolling through students’ neighborhoods twice a day is such a staple of the K-12 experience that administrators often have a difficult time making alterations. Transportation to and from schools in many states, is not required by law for students without special needs.įiscal hawks for years have been pushing districts to either ax transportation altogether, as many charter schools have done, or design a more efficient system. “For every dollar that we spend on transportation, that takes a dollar away from the classroom.” “Transportation costs have gone up and up and up and up,” said Roy Blair, the director of business services for Mark Twain Union Elementary School District. In order to cut costs, some districts have instituted fees, like Mark Twain, or increased the distance students must live from school in order to qualify for bus rides. ![]() “That, for, what we hope, is a one-year pandemic, just didn’t make a lot of fiscal sense.”ĭistricts also have introduced health and safety measures, installing hand sanitizers on their buses and plexiglass around bus drivers, and employing paraprofessionals to conduct temperature checks of students. “To try to even cut the number of kids on a bus each day by half, we’d have to buy 20 more buses at $100,000 a pop,” said Jeff Danielsen, the superintendent of Watertown school district. That could wind up costing districts millions of dollars, a cost many, already undergoing their own budget cuts, can’t afford. In order to comply, administrators said they’d have to double, possibly triple their routes, hire more bus drivers, and add buses to their fleets. Health experts this summer told districts that if kids were going to ride the bus, they should be spaced out, one per seat, every other row. Costly Line ItemĪside from paying teachers, transportation is one of the costliest aspects of running a school district, nationally adding up to more than $25 billion a year, more than twice the amount spent in 1980. ![]() While no students in South Dakota have signed up to get reimbursed from the state, more than 8,000 families so far have signed up for Philadelphia’s cash-back program. There’s already a part of this that’s fully normalized.” See Also: Getting Kids to School: Tackling the COVID-19 Transportation Problem “But we’re already charging for lunch and Advanced Placement classes and lockers. “It sets up a potential problematic relationship where a public school system is charging for services,” said Marguerite Roza, a Georgetown University school finance professor. And Mark Twain Union Elementary School District in Angels Camp, Calif., is adding $10 to the annual $130 parents pay this year for transportation costs. ![]() Watertown schools in South Dakota is offering parents 42 cents a mile if they can manage to get their kids to school on their own, on average a 30-mile round trip. In Philadelphia, parents can get up to $1,500 this school year for opting out of their school bus ride. ![]()
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