Off The Beat: Transparency In School Bus Funding Is Only Fair
In just six weeks Hawaii students will be heading back to school after a short summer break. Thousands of them will likely be looking for a ride to school since the Hawaii Department of Education is planning to cut bus routes all over the state in order to stay within its shrinking transportation budget.
Parents are already beginning to worry how they will get their kids to class and home again if their bus is one of those on the chopping block. District officials could come up with specific route cuts as soon as next week.
But as Board of Education member Jim Williams pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting on the bus issue, parents should be worried about a lot more than the bus service.
The DOE is $17 million shy of what it says it needs to maintain the current level of bus service. Officials initially said about 17,000 kids would lose service, practically decimating service on Oahu.
The board and district officials have been meeting since March and have whittled the deficit down to about $5.5 million as of Tuesday. Most of the money used to cover the shortfall comes from federal funds that go for a variety of programs, including to pay for substitute teachers.
But what is the money being shifted away from in order to pay school bus costs? As Williams pointed out, the board is making decisions about how to plug the transportation hole without knowing the other half of the equation. What is being lost?
Civil Beat has been following the skyrocketing school bus costs since last year in its investigative series, Taken For A Ride. A main concern has been that bus companies are being paid at the expense of academic programs, school supplies and staff.
Williams is now expressing that concern at the board level so maybe there will finally be some answers. The district and the board should lay out what things will be lost if the money is spent to keep the buses running. Safety is one concern, attendance is another.
For years, the district has unblinkingly paid the bus companies whatever they have asked. Very few if any bids have been rejected even while the department watched prices climb year after year with little satisfactory explanation. It took the Legislature to finally put the brakes on by setting a limit on how much money it would allow for school transportation.
And lawmakers also included a provision that prohibits the DOE from tapping the discretionary funds provided to schools to help make ends meet. The department is left to snatch federal funds, also called Impact Aid that stems from the presence of military installations in the state.
So let’s see what that money would have been spent on if it wasn’t going to the bus companies. And perhaps that will allow people to decide if the bus companies’ demands come at too high a public cost.
