School bus costs called the first in line Group says New York tops nation in school transportation costs — with little incentive to change By Scott Waldman Updated 7:02 am, Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The buses pull up to schools across the region and idle in the cold as ribbons of exhaust bellow out.
Sometimes, a bus, which gets about seven miles per gallon, pulls off after a single student steps out. New York has the highest school transportation costs in the country, a new study has found, and is rare in using public money to bus students to private and parochial schools.
As it does with so many other areas of school spending, New York state leads the nation in the cost to transport its pupils, according to a new report from the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan group that advocates for change in New York spending. School districts in the state spend $1,141 per student on transportation, which is 149 percent more than the national average of $459.
Perhaps most alarming is the total amount New York schools spend to transport students and how rapidly those costs have risen. The amount has more than doubled in the last decade alone, the report found. In 2010, New York schools spent $3 billion to transport students, compared to $1.5 billion in 2001.
The high cost is driven by a number of factors, said Elizabeth Lynam, author of the report. Few states bus children to non-public schools, and most don't bus children who live relatively close to school. The most significant part of the broken equation, however, is that districts have little incentive to seek change. They are reimbursed for up to 90 percent of their transportation costs, and one-third of the districts in New York receive the full amount in aid...............................>>>>.......................>>>>.................Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/loca.....19.php#ixzz2FmoeWUTu
The state Board of Regents also is concerned with rising transportation costs and will form a committee to look at a number of areas of the school aid formula, including transportation. Locally, transportation costs in the Schenectady school district are $7.9 million, $6.8 million in Albany, $6.1 million in Bethlehem and $5.6 million in East Greenbush, according to the report. While rural schools often have longer travel distances, city schools have more special education students, who cost more to bus.
The school district shouldn't and wouldn't have to bus kids to 'non-public schools'.....IF.....they didn't collect school taxes from families that private pay for their kids to go to 'non-public schools'. It would save the school district some bucks and the 'private school' families.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Schenectady City Schools implemented busing at a time when even the guy who invented the idea admitted it wasn't a good idea, in hindsight. So it was discredited by its inventor, but that didn't stop our holy crusading social engineers from going ahead with their infernal plans, under the pretense of "saving money" and "declining enrollment". We always did have that odd rule about providing transport to private schools, which seems to me a strange one, but I think that might be one of the unfunded State mandates the schools always complain about. This has nothing to do with 'safety' or kids being too lazy to walk or not enough kids to keep a school open or any such thing. I have heard people discussing the bus issue as related to those things but it is simply not true. If the schools really want to save money, they should end busing, return to the neighborhood schools that attract taxpaying homebuyers, re-open Howe School as an elementary school for the neighborhood children, open Oneida again (the parents want it) build a school at the Brandywine site (there are scads of small children in that neighborhood), offer after school programs for the parents who work, for that site, because low-income parents could really use that, put an elementary school back in the Stockade to make that area attractive to families again, etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately, with the new social worker at the helm, we are going to continue along with the closing of schools, everybody in one building, to hell with what the parents want model of 'education'. It doesn't make any sense to sell off an asset (Oneida) to fix a budget hole once. It doesn't make sense to ignore the wishes of the remaining parents who actually give a damn. It doesn't make sense to ignore suggestions FROM THE TEACHERS about how to help kids that aren't reading at grade level. We are continuing along the path laid out by someone horrible who knew better than everyone what was best for 'The Children" like the rest of us hated kids or something. Well we are reaping the benefits now, of listening to these not very bright holy sanctimonious social engineer types. Yet we push on, if the plan was an obvious failure we just need to do more of the same. I shouldn't even look at any posting relating to our schools. It is going to give me an aneurism or something.
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