Texas school districts scramble to pay for busing amid massive funding gap
Nearly every day, hundreds of thousands of Texas students board a school bus.
"We transport over a third of all the kids in this district," said Daniel Cunningham, a driver in Northwest ISD.
For some, he knows the school bus is their vehicle to a brighter future.
"Without transportation, a lot of these kids will not be making it to school," he said. "It's a vital role in getting kids to and from their education."
Transportation key to student attendance, safety, and academic success
A recent study underscores just how vital.
Most school administrators reported a lack of access to transportation contributed to chronic tardiness (76%), chronic absenteeism (74%), academic performance challenges (68%) and student safety concerns (75%).
"The connection between transportation and educational outcomes is a lot closer than I think most people are thinking," said Campbell Millum with Hop Skip Drive, a transportation company and one of the study's sponsors. "School transportation is in crisis, and the question is what are we going to do about it?"
Funding fails to keep pace with rising transportation costs
Funding for transportation has failed to keep pace with rising demand and rising costs.
"Not even close," said Jonathan Pastusek, Northwest ISD's chief financial officer.
Pastusek is the one trying to make the most of the money the state allows the district to collect and keep.
For transportation, he explains, the funding formula is based on the number of miles buses drive.
It's a formula that's remained essentially the same since 1984 with one minor change in 2019.
"It used to be a band that averaged to be about a dollar and they just changed to now be a dollar," said Pastusek. "It's not realistic at all."
For NISD last year, Texas allotted the district $3.5 million for transportation.
The district spent more than four times that.
North Texas districts spend far more than state allotment on busing
The funding gap, we found, was even bigger for other North Texas districts.
In recent years, the state's transportation allotment has covered:
"I've been in school finance 11 years and, if anything, it's gotten smaller. Mainly because of inflation of goods and services, as well as every year you want to provide raises to your staff," said Pastusek.
Plano ISD this year cut bus service to roughly a thousand students whose routes to school had previously been categorized as too hazardous to walk.
- 22% of Dallas ISD's actual expenses
- 21% of Lewisville ISD's
- 20% of Crowley ISD's
- 19% of Mansfield ISD's
- 18% of Arlington ISD's
- 18% of Frisco ISD's
- 16% of Fort Worth ISD's
- 12% of Plano ISD's
Other districts have pulled money from other areas to cover the funding gap.
Lawmakers propose increases, but legislation faces roadblocks
"We have 5,500,000 public school students spread out in the geographically largest state in the nation, other than Alaska, and getting these kids to school is a significant cost," said State Rep. John Bryant.
He filed a bill this year that would have raised the transportation allotment from $1 a mile to $1.50 a mile. It would have also expanded bus service to students living more than a mile from school.
"Two miles is a long ways for a child to walk, and that's what the current standard is," said Bryant.
His legislation never even got a hearing.
"There's no counterargument offered. It's simply: this is all we're going to spend. It's very difficult to understand," said Bryant.
The legislature did increase funding for public schools, but far less than what public school advocates were asking for.
"The funding we got from the state this year was really what I would call… they pigeonholed it," said Pastusek. "We didn't get much money for us to be able to make local decisions like transportation or changes to fine arts programs, or any of those kinds of things. It was very restrictive."
So for now, districts across the state say they are digging deep to keep buses on the road and kids in school.