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Funding formula for school transportation discussed Thursday, Sep 21, 2006 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A panel of state lawmakers, public school bus drivers and transportation officials met Wednesday to try and develop a new public school transportation funding formula. The Funding Formula Committee of the Academic Facilities Oversight Committee is to examine how the state's 245 school districts currently pay to transport students, how many children are bused and the condition of the roads in the districts. "We've got a lot of information to consider," Rep. Rick Saunders, D-Hot Springs, said during the meeting. After about two hours, the committee asked Mike Simmons, director of transportation with the Department of Education, to try and get individual school district transportation costs from recently submitted budget requests. "We want to know their actual transportation costs," said Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant, adding that the rising cost of fuel over the past few years will be a key part of that information. Broadway said he hopes the committee can meet again early next month and make recommendations by the end of the year. During the meeting, Tristan Greene, special assistant to the commissioner for research and policy with the state Department of Education, presented the committee with several charts detailing how other states pay the transportation costs of their public school districts. "States across the country have very different ways of funding transportation," he said, adding that in Arkansas it is part of the foundation funding. In some states, he continued, the districts are reimbursed 100 percent of their transportation costs at the end of each year. Arkansas has had a variety of transportation funding formulas, the latest set in 1997. That formula, however, was not funded in 2001 because of budget cuts and was repealed in 2005, Greene said. The committee also was presented with a draft copy of a report on public transportation adequacy prepared by the consulting firm Lawrence O. Picus and Associates. That report, Greene said, included factors that need to be considered when constructing a transportation formula include: miles driven, hours of operation, population density, bus capacities, total number of students transported, hazardous walking conditions, desegregation and cost of bus replacement. Simmons told committee that the cost of bus replacement will be a key factor in the formula because of Act 1979 of 2005, which required his office to establish mandatory replacement cycles for school buses. He said office has developed a plan, which is being phased in, that requires school districts to discard all busses that are more than 20 years old. That means, he said, in 2010 all buses will have to have been made in 1990 or thereafter. "At last count, which was back in the spring, we still had about 1,200 buses that fall into the category of being older than 1990," Simmons said. "So, in the next three and a half years, there's going to be a lot of districts that are going to have to push to get those 80s model buses off the road," he said. Simmons also said the formula needs to be based on more than just the distance buses travel, or number of students picked up each day. Generally, it costs more to transport students in rural districts because of the road conditions, he said. "Gravel roads are more expensive to operate on, they're harder on your buses, they take longer to run," he said. |
