OUR VIEW: Cuts to bus funding could hurt schools' bottom line
Californians have learned the hard way over the past two years that many cuts to the state budget only end up costing money, or doing harm, somewhere else. The latest example involves the likelihood that school districts may have to drastically pare back, even eliminate, the busing of students to and from campus.
Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed cutting school transportation funding entirely next year -- and this on the heels of trigger cuts that will slash $248 million for bus transportation this year.
Many of the resulting angst over those cuts has focused on the challenges that rural districts -- and rural students' parents -- will face. Areas with narrow, winding roads, extremes of weather and greater distances between home and school will be hard-hit without the comfort, safety and convenience of school buses.
But flatlander districts will feel those cuts, too. If significantly fewer buses are available, it seems inevitable that attendance will suffer. Schools rely heavily on those Average Daily Attendance numbers for funding; any threat to ADA hurts.
Truancy impacts dropout rates and, inevitably, economic productivity.
Most students will stick it out, of course, and find other ways to get to school. Many will walk, which has a host of positive consequences. But some neighborhoods are safer to walk through than others, and some areas with low-income demographics lack sidewalks and other pedestrian safety features. That's not exactly encouraging for us in Bakersfield these days, having endured an unusual surge in car-vs.-pedestrian fatalities.
If Brown's deeper school transportation cuts come to pass, it will be necessary for school districts to reassess the needs of their students and assign resources based on factors that go beyond simply distances to be traveled.
California school districts spent more than $1.2 billion to transport students in 2009-10, California Watch reports. State funding covered just 38 percent of those needs. The challenge only grows now.
