Last week Gov. Chris Gregoire brought up a vaguely familiar idea to reduce state spending: lower the state’s contribution to pay for local school bus programs. We say “familiar” because this topic has come up before. We say “vaguely” because cutting school bus money is usually considered only at the local level.
But with the state doling out $220 million per biennium to local school transportation departments, and with the Legislature facing a $2 billion revenue shortfall after already cutting $10 billion, this particular idea has morphed from vaguely familiar to compelling.
Of course, we should all be wary of overreaction by some folks who say school buses are vital to public education. No one is saying they’re not, but Gregoire and others are correctly wondering if adjustments and efficiencies (OK, state spending cuts) can be made. That’s precisely what has happened in California, Colorado and a few other states. According to an Associated Press story last week, most states pay between 30 and 100 percent of the local cost of student transportation systems, but that varies considerably depending on the state and the district. In Washington, the state commitment averages about 67 percent.
Here in Clark County, the three largest school districts logged a combined 5.6 million miles and collectively spent $22.6 million on school bus programs in the 2009-2010 school year. Leading the trio was the Evergreen district, which spent $8.9 million driving kids 2 million miles to schools, according to a Columbian story last May.
That same month, we editorialized that there are several ways to reduce spending on school transportation programs. These ways might seem drastic to some families but in the overall scheme of things, they aren’t really all that radical. For example, why not narrow the circle around each school beyond which students — by district policy — are guaranteed a taxpayer-funded free ride to school? Currently those circles are each drawn about one-half mile from schools in most Clark County districts. Could a minor adjustment, say, to seven-tenths of a mile, yield significant savings? The concept is certainly worth exploring.
Also — and we’ll get lots of screams from parents on this one — there’s the notion of charging fees for school bus rides. It’s happening in many other places, $150 per child per year in Jefferson County near Denver. One district near San Francisco has been charging a dollar per ride for two years.
We can hear the outcry: How dare you? Well, when compared with other budget-cutting ideas such as increased class sizes, a buck a ride doesn’t seem so drastic. And when stacked up against even more dramatic proposals such as reducing the school year (a horrible idea; we’re better than Oregon), a fare system for bus rides makes sense.
There is a deeper issue involved here, beyond public education. It’s a parenting issue. When did the responsibility of getting a kid to school get transferred from so many parents to all of the taxpayers? One of the fears expressed in last week’s story about Gregoire and school bus funding was that these cuts might increase truancy. Perhaps, but if that were to happen, it would not be an education problem. It would be a parenting problem.
Yes, the school bus ride has become widely accepted in modern America, but during the worst economic crisis in seven decades, unconventional solutions must be considered.
