Schools' transport costs exceed estimates

Each school day, a taxi cab drives into the suburbs northwest of Omaha, picks up a child and delivers the student to a Millard elementary school.

The Millard school district pays the 21.5-mile round-trip fare: $47.30 per day.

By year's end, the cost of transporting that child to school will be $8,514, nearly 29 times the average cost of busing a Millard elementary school student to his or her neighborhood school.

The taxi ride provides an extreme example of the costs facing 11 metro Omaha school districts this year as they transport students for the first time under the Nebraska Legislature's plan to better integrate poor and more affluent students.

School districts within the Learning Community of Douglas and Sarpy Counties report that they will spend a combined $1.8 million to transport between districts 437 students who qualified for free transportation this school year. The average cost per student: $4,291.

That cost, based on new transportation contracts and routes, is twice the per-student cost districts predicted a year ago when districts were asked to provide an estimate to the Nebraska Department of Education. School districts receiving a transfer student pay the transportation cost, but districts are eligible for additional state aid to cover it.

This first glimpse at transportation costs is providing fuel to Learning Community critics who say the money could be better spent in the classroom. But supporters say moving kids around is essential to accomplish the Learning Community's mission of increasing opportunity and achievement for disadvantaged students.

District officials say transportation costs will only go up as Learning Community officials try harder to raise awareness of the transfer process, called open enrollment, after what everyone says was a meager initial response. Rules governing open enrollment were not finalized until January, which gave parents only a few months to consider enrolling a child for this fall.

This year, 1,731 students used open enrollment to move between districts. That's about 1.6 percent of the enrollment of the 11 Learning Community districts.

Another concern among superintendents is that transportation costs will rise as parents use open enrollment for convenience rather than to achieve the Learning Community's goals.

Under open enrollment, parents in Douglas and Sarpy Counties can apply to send their children to any public elementary, middle or high school in the two counties, subject to rules that foster socioeconomic diversity.

Transportation is free to low-income students and to any student whose income level brings their new school closer to a state goal of 40 percent poverty.

Every day, buses, vans and cabs fan out across the Omaha metro area, pick up children and give them a free ride to schools in other districts, sometimes miles or sometimes just blocks away from their neighborhood school.

Papillion-La Vista sends minivans for some kids. Bellevue uses a transfer station to switch students from contract buses to the district's buses for the final drive to school.

Millard is sending a bus to near Eppley Airfield in northeast Omaha to pick up students who have a 91-minute, one-way ride to Millard North High School about 20 miles away.

In Millard, district officials fix their transport cost at $519,000 — 108 students at $4,805 per child. School board member Mike Kennedy expressed frustration that in tight financial times, money is going to pay a cab driver that could be used to pay a tutor to help struggling readers.

“If we're just doing this to try to change the make-up, and it doesn't affect the outcome of education, then that's a waste of money,” Kennedy said.

Papillion-La Vista spokeswoman Annette Eyman said her district's cost of $400,000 for 67 students, if spent in the classroom, would be enough to hire seven teachers.

Bellevue could not accommodate its 60 open enrollment transfers with its own buses. The district contracted with a private company, First Student, for five buses to bring students to a transfer station near the district's bus depot at U.S. Highway 75 and Nebraska Highway 370.

The district is paying $5,833 apiece — that's more than eight times what the district paid per student for regular bus transportation within the district in 2008-09.

Ann Long, co-chairwoman of the Learning Community's diversity task force that oversees open enrollment, called it “a shame to have to spend that much educational money on transportation.”

“I think the Legislature needs to be made fully aware of what their statute has cost, and from there we try to make some intelligent decisions on going forward from here,” Long said. “If the goal is still to move kids far, far across districts, you have to move them somehow.”

State Sen. Greg Adams, chairman of the Nebraska Legislature's Education Committee, said he's concerned but not alarmed by the transportation costs, which he said have to be weighed against the benefits of open enrollment.

“I'm more concerned about the achievement gap and opportunity,” he said.

State senators created the Learning Community in 2007 against a backdrop of persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in Omaha's high-poverty schools. The new education cooperative was designed to divert local property taxes to high-poverty districts, oversee open enrollment and deliver services to help disadvantaged youths do better in school.

Adams said he knew there would be transportation costs associated with open enrollment when he and other senators passed the bill creating it, but he said he didn't have an estimate at the time.

In 2007, fiscal analysts for the Nebraska Legislature examined the bill, but their report contained no estimate.

Adams said it's up to districts to work out the transportation and logistics with the Learning Community council.

Sandra Jensen, president of the Omaha school board, said costs can be brought down if districts work toward a more efficient transportation plan, share routes and buses, and if city buses are used to transport some students.

Omaha Public Schools placed 209 students from districts outside OPS, according to Dennis Pool, assistant superintendent.

Of the students transferring in, 135 qualified for and received transportation.

Twenty are being transported under contract with an independent company at a rate of $6,891 per student, because the district lacked bus capacity, he said. The remaining 115 are receiving transportation through the district's regular bus service, which is costing about $1,142 per student.

That makes OPS's average cost for transfers from other districts about $1,993.

Jensen said it was “no secret” that moving students between schools would come with a price. She said she hopes the costs won't be used to undermine the Learning Community's original goal of providing equitable opportunities to all students in a more integrated school setting.

“That's what everybody agreed with,” Jensen said. “At least that's what I heard being articulated from all districts in the Learning Community.”

Gretna Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Riley, who leads a group of superintendents advising the council, said district officials attempted last spring to work out a more cooperative approach to transportation but ran out of time.

There is still some interest among superintendents in looking for a more efficient approach, Riley said.

Rick Black, superintendent of the Papillion-La Vista schools, said the Learning Community's transportation costs will eat into the state aid that supports districts across the state.

“All the needs paid out to school districts across the state are coming out of that one pool,” he said. “It's not going to get any bigger, although the costs for the Learning Community are increasing.”

Contact the writer:

444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com

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