There Are No Free Rides
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 By Matthew CarrYesterday, WLWT in Cincinnati ran a story questioning the use of traditional public school buses to provide transportation for private school students. The opening paragraph of the piece sums up the issue: “Every day across the Tri-State, public school buses are used to take kids to private schools. It’s costing taxpayers millions of dollars every year and in this financial crisis some wonder if it’s time to stop.”
One of the many enduring quotes of Milton Friedman is that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Perhaps someone should have reminded the folks at WLWT that there are also no free bus rides. The parents of private school students continue to pay property, income, and sales taxes that fund their local traditional public school system – despite the fact that their children don’t attend them. In short, they face a double taxation for schooling. While this is a voluntary choice, it in no way obviates the fact that these parents are indeed paying for the privilege of putting their child on a school bus. Not only is it not a free ride, they’re paying substantially more for the privilege than non-private school choosing parents.
But the larger, and far more important point, is that these attempts to gin up divisions between public and private school users are all rooted in an anachronistic district-centric view of public education. We noted in a 2006 viewpoint when the Columbus school system started denying private and charter school students transportation: “If every student is entitled to a quality education, why are they not also entitled to the means of getting there? C.P.S. has revealed the mindset of many school districts in Ohio; education is about schools and rules, not about children.” In a truly student-centered education system, the superciliousness of questioning who gets to sit on a school bus becomes obvious.
As for an immediate and practical solution to the tough times in Cincinnati, our recommendation back in 2006 is still salient.
There is a far more efficient, effective, and reasonable solution for guaranteeing transportation for every student who wants it, regardless of their school.
The Altoona Area School District in Pennsylvania recently contracted out their transportation services to a private company, Student Transportation of America.
According to the Altoona Mirror: “The company will pay Altoona $1.4 million for its fleet of buses and vans and will rent the district’s bus garage for $96,000 per year, school board President David Ellis said. The company also will pay the cost of the district transportation coordinator and mechanics.”
As an added bonus, the district expects to save about $100,000 a year in transportation costs.
The state of Ohio could implement a similar program in each of Ohio’s major urban areas, with one critical improvement; rather than sending transportation funds through school districts, who have every incentive to frustrate their competitors, the state should contract directly with the private provider for each city.
