By Rob
It is easy to criticize Washington’s commitment to education as illustrated by the budget cuts over the past few years. One idea that was recently floated was eliminating state funding for busing. Eliminating this funding will save approximately $220 million.
Washington State’s funding covers two-thirds of the cost to bus students to school. If eliminated local districts would have to bear the extra costs. Presumably some districts can afford this extra burden and others would require levies. However, an additional levy would be difficult to pass in many communities.
Eliminating bus routes may be necessary. This fact is alarming. First, a school bus loaded with 45 kids is an efficient way of bringing students to school. It is far more economically efficient (time and fuel) than individual cars or carpooling.
Second, how many schools are equipped to handle an increased number of students being dropped off by car? Presently the morning drop off at my school looks like an Ikea parking lot on a Saturday. We are not designed to handle the traffic we currently have.
Third, and most importantly, is safety.
“Each year approximately 800 school-aged children are killed in motor vehicle crashed during normal school travel hours. Of these 800 deaths, about 20 (2 percent) – 5 school bus passengers and 15 pedestrians – are school bus-related. The other 98 percent of the school aged deaths occur in other motor vehicles… or to pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorcyclists.” (The Relative Risks of School Travel: A National Perspective and Guidance for Local Community Risk Assessment– a study released by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in June 2002).
On average there is one school bus fatality per 500 million vehicle miles traveled. School bus drivers are among the most professional and safety conscious individuals to serve our children. They make school buses one of the safest forms of transportation in the United States.
Every educator understands that schools must be a safe place for students. This begins at the bus stop. Cuts to education could put the futures of students at risk but cuts to transportation have the potential to put lives at risk. Let’s take this proposed cut off the table. It never should have been there in the first place.
And what happens to the truancy rate in the pooer neighborhoods? Or for other families with limited transportation resources. Sure there is the public bus-if it’s time table matches school hours (could be hard for zero hour students). And really that is only an appropriate option for middle school students and older.
I’m really hoping this is a gimmick to get knee jerk reactions rather than a viable option for closing the budget gap. And if we are at the point of needing to stoop to such gimmicks what does that say about how our society values children?
On the one hand, I agree that de-funding school buses would be disastrous, especially for the smaller districts who are about to get hammered, should the legislature suspend sales tax equalization.
But on the other hand, it might just be the wake-up call this state needs.
Rob, I’m totally with you. Trying to save money by cutting funding is like my husband and I keeping cable but cutting the $10 land line we’ve kept through our T-Mobile cellular accounts. We’re cutting something that’s really useful in order to save $10. And we’d have to cut a million $10 things. Or, we can cut something big and unnecessary, like cable, or eating out.
First, the legislators need the power to raise revenue. Requiring a simple majority to cut taxes but a super majority to raise them has been catastrophic to public services.
Second, legislators need to be courageous enough to raise taxes, and raise them from the right sources, like people who have more money than they need and businesses who enjoy massive loopholes while families who struggle but don’t qualify for any special services pay full price for everything.
Transportation to school, for many children, means they get to go. Public transportation isn’t always safe, isn’t time-efficient, and isn’t cost-effective, as Seattle has found out with their Orca cards.
Alongside all your reasons why busses are important is the fact that cutting busses doesn’t save enough to make it worth it. We continue to slash the tendons of public education in order to save pennies. It makes no sense.
What is unfortunate is that when these cuts go through, it sadly will not be long until there is a tragedy, and then all the same people unwilling to pay their taxes will then point fingers at the state government and demand to know how come something wasn’t done to prevent it. That is how I teach cycles of democracy: we demand something (let’s say crime is high, so we demand funding for public safety) from our government, are taxed in order for our government to provide this demand (government grows), and then as regulations work well enough that we no longer feel threatened by crime, we revolt against paying the taxes so we or our elected proxies vote against them (government shrinks), and without the funding for safety, crime increases and we blame the government for not doing enough to protect us–like they used to. Eventually the crime makes us desperate enough to agree to tax ourselves, which we do (government grows) and the cycle repeats ad infinitum. I’m hoping we’re in the lowest valley of this cycle for education, and that pretty soon people will realize that if they want schools to perform to their expectations, the first solution is full and adequate funding. I guarantee that if we as a society put our money where our mouths are regarding education, we would see results. In spades. But for some reason we think that the way to improve schools is to demand more and fund less.