A statewide group composed of elected officials and school leaders is wrestling with the thorny issues of school bus driver shortages and how much aid public versus non-public schools should get when transporting their students to school.
The work group, which includes legislators and representatives from public, private and charter schools, was set up in the state's biennial budget bill last year to explore issues related to school transportation. A working draft is currently out for comment to the members.
The draft, written by an outside consultant, reiterates that opinions vary on exact fixes. But several suggestions appear to have consensus: that the state needs to provide more funding for school transportation and that the current system is not working, for public, private or charter school students.
It notes more 22,000 students, most of them at charter or private schools, are deemed "impractical to transport" every year by public school districts. Meanwhile, just 14.68% of all school bus driver vacancies were filled last fiscal year due to the ongoing bus driver shortage.
"Why are we leaving students without transportation to school?" the report reads. "The situation is complicated, and even the members of the Transportation Workgroup do not agree on the core challenges. However, for Ohio to thrive, ALL our students must attend school on a regular basis and graduate high school with the skills and knowledge to take productive next steps."
What the report recommends
The report found that costs of transportation are rising, as are the number of special education students needing transportation. Meanwhile, state funding has not kept up with rising expenses.
In Ohio, public school districts are legally required to provide bus or van transportation to all students grades kindergarten through eighth grade who live more than two miles from a school they attend, regardless of if they attend a public, private or charter school. Public schools are required to provide transportation for non-public school students who live up to 30 minutes away.
Districts can provide payments-in-lieu-of transportation, or PILOs, to students they deem too "impractical" to bus. But the work group found that those payments, up to $1,214.29 per school year per student, are not enough for families to obtain adequate transportation.
The full draft recommendations in the report are:
- For the state to "guarantee" transportation to all Ohio students, regardless of their school
- To "fully fund" schools for transportation, while "continuing to honor local control"
- To establish "regional transportation authorities" through local education service centers (ESC) to collectively manage transport for all students, rather than their home districts
- Develop a statewide transportation database that allows schools access to basic information about students to optimize routes
- Establish "strong, collaborative relationships" between districts of all kinds
- Implement new bus driver retainment, recruitment and training programs
- Allocate state funds for a prototype of an "expanded regional transportation consortia"
- Establish maximum ride time guarantees for all students, up to 90 minutes for high school students
- Require the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to monitor compliance
- To phase out PILOs over time, while expanding how much charter and private school parents can receive in the meantime, up to $2,500 per student, capped at $5,000 per family
The work group argues transportation reform is needed to cut down on students being late or missing class; reduce the financial burden on schools; and make the overall system more fair for students regardless of which school option they use.
Opinions differ on how much nonpublic schools should benefit from new rules
Work group member Bob Hlasko, superintendent of the Medina County Education Services Center, said several provisions that favor nonpublic schools were added to the draft report recently that weren't directly discussed by the group. Those provisions call for increasing the amount parents can receive through PILOs and increasing the maximum amount of time students can be on the bus. He said he did not know which group member added the suggestions.
"Unfortunately, by including this piece in the report at the last minute what appears to be happening is what happened with vouchers - the money follows the student - which isn't an issue until you realize that the money following the student is MORE money than the public district would have received had that student stayed," Hlasko said, referencing Ohio's recent expansion of school vouchers for private schools.
Hlasko said there's been a drastic increase in the amount of students using school vouchers in recent years, and therefore an increase in the burden on school transportation systems. In addition to that, charter and private schools can be located far from the districts in which students live in.
"The law was written before the proliferation of many nonpublic schools, so there's a whole lot more students now we're dealing with," Hlasko said. "And secondly, the two-mile radius is talking about the home district. You can't use that same argument because the nonpublic or community school is not right next to the high school, elementary or middle school."
Work group member Andrew Boy said charter schools like his are also feeling the squeeze from the transportation system. He's founder and CEO of United Schools, a system of charter schools in Columbus. In Ohio, charter schools are free, state-subsidized options that are run by nonprofits or private entities.
Boy said United Schools now provides its own transportation after issues it experienced with Columbus schools. United was losing students to other districts after Columbus schools declared them "impractical to transport," he explained.
"We ended our partnership with (Columbus) and now provide our own bus service with state funding that only covers a third of the cost because we are a small district and do not have economies of scale. So, we recognize the challenges and complexity of managing a transportation system first hand because we are managing our own transportation this year," he explained.
Akron Board of Education member Rene Molenaur, who herself has two kids in the system, said large urban schools are already overburdened with the responsibility of transporting thousands of non-public students.
Molenaur said her children are ineligible for busing from the school district. But if they attended private schools in the area, they would be eligible, or at least receive payment-in-lieu-of transportation.
"Families are receiving support, and in this case it's transportation support, for leaving a public system but not for staying in it," she said. "We have created an incentive structure that works against the public school system and the financial and operational burden remains with the public schools that are effectively required to subsidize their own decline."
More than one in four students eligible for transportation at Akron Public Schools does not attend the school district, Ohio Department of Education and Workforce data shows.
The final report from the transportation work group is due to the Ohio Legislature by the end of June.
