I can’t figure out why public school districts should be held responsible for transporting students to private schools, but that’s the law. At least they’re trying to find ways to make the burden less costly.
Districts to carpool for busing private-schools students
They stand to save by streamlining busing, but ride times might grow
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:47 PM
By Jennifer Smith Richards
The Columbus DispatchIt takes 43 school buses to drive roughly 400 Franklin County students to two private schools.
That leaves a lot of mostly empty buses, some driving through several school districts to the same destinations: Columbus School for Girls and the nearby St. Charles Preparatory School.
To try to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, a group of central Ohio school districts will try to streamline busing by driving one another’s students. Two test projects, thought to be the first large-scale attempts to share transportation in the region, are expected to begin next school year.
In one, Olentangy, Worthington and Westerville schools will share buses for students who attend Columbus Academy in Gahanna. Ohio school districts typically must bus students who live within their boundaries even if they attend charter or private schools.
…A second study between Dublin, Hilliard, Worthington and Westerville will share busing to Columbus School for Girls and St. Charles, both on the East Side.
Research by Fisher Professional Services at Ohio State University found that if all of the county’s public-school districts shared services to those two private schools, the number of buses used would be cut from 43 to 19 and the districts would save a combined $1.2 million.
