The cost of busing

In yesterday's post I mentioned peak oil and how this will affect the public schools, due to increased costs for student transportation. I wanted to say a little more about that.

It's not easy to find national statistics involving busing costs, perhaps because school funding is partly through local taxes, and because schools outsource transportation in various ways. I read in a couple of local news articles that school busing costs are second only to payroll expenses, but there was no specific data to cite, and I don't know if that's true nationally.

Urban sprawl has been one contributor to increased busing. In Maine, public school transportation cost $8.7 million in 1970, or the equivalent of $37 million in 1997 dollars. Furthermore, between 1970 and 1997 the state saw a decrease in its K-12 population, losing 27,000 students. Yet it cost $54 million to bus students to school in 1997, or close to 50% more than in 1970 (adjusting for inflation). The increase is attributable to urban sprawl, according to this report.

School choice is another factor which can increase the prevalence of busing and the length of bus rides. For instance:

Pinellas County, Florida: "Under [the new school choice plan], high school students begin their day at 7:05 a.m., busing costs have jumped $11.7 million in two years, and a $23 million special reserve account will be depleted by next year."

Consolidation of schools, which saves money due to reduced administrative and operating costs for the closed buildings, typically increases the distance to school for many students, and requires more money for transportation. Right now, while gas is still cheap, the savings may outweigh transportation increases. But when these school boards vote to consolidate, have they taken into account $5/gallon gas, and what that will mean to busing costs? Not to mention that consolidation steals more time from our children's lives:

Saltsburg, Pennsylvania: "Proponents on the board have argued consolidation is necessary to increase efficiency and control future tax increases--in the face of insufficient state subsidies.... But residents have charged that Saltsburg students' safety and energy levels in school will be compromised by extended bus trips of up to an hour in length, including travel in heavy traffic on Rt. 22."

What do the schools do when facing student transportation costs they can't pay? Here are a couple of examples from the past month:

Leominster, Massachusetts: "School officials plan to ask the City Council for more than $900,000 to solve a transportation shortfall in fiscal year 2006."

Westford, Massachusetts: "A new $225 busing fee will be collected from students in grades seven to 12 and from elementary students who live within two miles of their schools. State law mandates free busing for all elementary kids living beyond two miles from their schools."

Right now, oil sells for somewhere around $50/barrel, depending on the week. A French investment bank recently predicted that oil would cost $380/barrel by 2015. Estimates like this are contentious, and I don't want to make this a blog about the price of gasoline, but for a slew of reasons I tend to agree with the more pessimistic predictions.

If the price of oil is multipled by 7 or 8 within the next decade, what becomes of the consolidated school districts which can barely pay transportation costs even now? What happens if they've sold or torn down the old buildings they didn't think they'd need, because centralized schools were supposedly better? What happens in communities which are wedded to school choice?

I'd like to think the public schools were taking into account permanently higher and permanently rising gas prices. But since even GM and Ford are ignoring the trends (GM's best idea is a hybrid Yukon in 2007-- does one laugh or cry?), I doubt many local school boards are preparing for the oil crunch.

The good news is, they'll be bringing back the small, non-age-segregated schoolhouse. The bad news is, in the interim school districts will go bankrupt. Between sprawl and centralization, there are now 450,000 school buses in operation, which take 23.5 million children to school every schoolday (see here for details). School buses get 9 miles to the gallon, at best. And every year from now on, we will have less oil than the year before. Well, I mean to say... you do the math.