Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > October > 04 > Entry
Private busing would cost schools more
Dayton schools finally have in black and white what they’ve been telling people for years — that it would cost them more than twice as much to hire a private busing company, or use their own buses, to transport high school students.
Right now, high school kids are given RTA passes. RTA sells them to the district at a discount. The whole contract costs the district $1 million. Private bus company bids start at more than $3 million.
RTA is under pressure from downtown business to find other options for high school kids, many of whom pass through downtown on the way to school. Business owners believe the kids are part of the problem with unruliness near the downtown bus shelters on Main Street.
But the school district has long maintained that the kids riding the bus to school are not the problem. They say the troublemakers are largely adults and truants and that problems at the bus stops are a law enforcement issue. They also point out that over the past five years the district has closed Patterson High School on First Street and temporarily relocated Stivers to the Five Oaks neighborhood during construction at its site on Fifth Street.
Those moves took a lot of kids off the streets of downtown, yet complaints continue.
To the school board, the RTA partnership makes sense. It costs both the district and the RTA some money, but it reliably gets kids to school.
Most controversial in the report released Tuesday was the suggestion that high school busing be dropped altogether and kids should be responsible to get to schools on their own.
School board president Gail Littlejohn has already nixed that idea.
What do you think is the best way to solve the high school busing problem?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Comments
By Don
October 7, 2005 5:39 PM | Link to this
As a daily commuter on RTA buses, I think the complaints about schoolchildren on the bus are overblown. The kids can be loud, boisterous and sometimes very profane, that’s true, but it’s not worth spending millions of extra dollars to get them off the buses. I doubt very much that it would improve downtown business, which has bigger problems with parking, parking enforcement and somnolent city government.By Terri
October 6, 2005 5:43 PM | Link to this
Students within a 1 mile radius of their schools don’t get bus passes.By Rev. Ray Kaiser
October 5, 2005 12:42 PM | Link to this
I am always concerned when anyone out of hand “nixes� a possible solution without looking at variations of the idea. I realize that we do not want to provide excuses for children to not attend school, but would it be possible for those who live within a short distance (a mile to a mile and a half) of a school be required to provide their own transportation like walking which would save money as well as provide a health benefit in a time when obesity is out of control among our youth. This is perhaps now in effect, but I don’t think so.