The following was posted on the Future Of Seattle Public Schools facebok group by Mary Ellen Russell as an explainer for Bus funding. It is reproduced here with permission from the author.

Let’s talk about bus funding. A lot of people are wondering whether closing schools would end up increasing transportation costs. Closing schools would likely result in more kids riding the bus and riding slightly longer distances. The following explanation of bus funding is info that has been shared by SPS staff with the School Traffic Safety Committee since 2017. A lot of it is drawn from a meeting with Linda Sebring in 2019 that was directly focused on bus funding mechanisms. The remainder is drawn from information shared by SPS’s transportation director and from publicly available budget documents. TLDR: more students riding buses would probably be revenue neutral.

*Edited to add that it's completely fine to share this post with the caveat that I'm working from best available numbers. If SPS wants to share more detailed breakdowns of transportation funding I'd be DELIGHTED.*

General Ed Bus Funding: One key thing to understand is that general ed busing is reimbursed by OSPI separately from other funding streams and separately from special ed busing. OSPI takes the district’s ridership information and actual bus costs and enters them into a black box formula called STARS. (For busing OSPI uses calendar years, not school years, making tracking costs extra challenging.) The formula takes into account the number of buses, number of schools served by buses, number of students riding the bus, and the distance travelled on each route. OSPI reimburses the district either the amount that the formula spits out or the actual cost that the district paid for busing, whichever is lower.

If SPS spends the same or less than the formula spits out then it gets fully reimbursed, plus an inflation adjustment. SPS can get dinged on reimbursement if the routes are too long or too short according to the formula but this doesn’t tend to be an issue. (Many rural and suburban WA districts transport kids farther than is needed for routes in SPS). The formula also penalizes districts for running buses that aren’t full, which does happen in SPS but not on many routes. Overall more butts in seats on gen-ed buses equals more funding - exactly enough additional funding to cover those costs. Fewer butts equals less funding. This means that if SPS buses more students after closing schools it likely won’t hurt the budget (or help).

Another important thing to know is that SPS can get up to 100% of its general ed busing costs reimbursed but can never end up with extra money from general ed busing. Cutting service does not free up money to spend elsewhere. If a district cuts its general education bus service the state will deduct the exact amount they saved from the transportation. You can never get reimbursed more than your actual costs for general ed busing. Conversely, if a district increases how many students ride general ed buses the state will increase the reimbursement by the same amount (after adjusting for the efficiency metrics in the STARS formula).

Before the pandemic SPS released a report from Council of Great City Schools showing that general ed busing was very close to 100% funded. Since then SPS has only released top-line numbers that don’t separate out gen-ed busing from special-ed and McKinney Vento, which makes it hard to tell if their efficiency has slipped. The STARS formula hasn’t been significantly revised so the best evidence that is publicly available points to general ed busing still being close to 100% funded.

Special Ed & MicKinney Vento Transportation Funding:Transportation services for Special Education and McKinney Vento are a different story. These services are required by federal law but drastically underfunded by the state.

McKinney Vento transportation (for students experiencing homelessness) has typically been completely left out of the state funding formula. Students experiencing homelessness are transported to the same school all year long regardless of where in the region they move in order to provide a consistent learning environment. SPS uses a car service called HopSkipDrive to transport these kids from locations all over the region where it wouldn’t make any sense to send a yellow bus. Homelessness among students at SPS has ballooned over the last 20 years and McKinney Vento transportation now costs SPS $8 million a year, about half of the projected transportation deficit for 24-25 (from the 24-25 budget book). In recent years SPS has been working with other schools in the region to coordinate McKinney Vento service and this has been bearing fruit in terms of saved costs. Last year SPS was able to recoup almost $1 million in costs from neighboring districts for transporting McKinney Vento students.

Last year the state also put up some funding for McKinney Vento for the very first time, as well as some additional money to fund special education transportation. It’s great to see the state notice this problem, but SPS will only receive about $400k in additional funding, about 2.5% of its transportation deficit.

Special education transportation also continues to be drastically underfunded by the state, contributing most of the remainder of this year’s projected $16 million transportation deficit. It is important to note that funding for these services cannot be backfilled with general ed transportation dollars. Reducing costs by cutting the number of general ed bus riders does not result in freeing up money; it results in the state cutting transportation reimbursement to the district. And the money to make up the transportation shortfall comes straight out of the general fund, directly leading to larger class sizes.

In 21-22 First Student didn’t have enough bus drivers and after a few chaotic weeks of historically bad bus service SPS responded by suspending a large number of bus routes. This led to an increase in special education busing because many students with behavioral challenges who would normally ride a general education bus had busing added to their IEP in order to ensure that they had a consistent and reliable way to get to school. Since then SPS has been combing through students assigned to special education busing and looking for those who could be transitioned back to general education busing.

I’m happy to say that this has opened up the opportunity for a rare win-win for students and the budget. Multiple parents of students using special education buses have shared that they would always have preferred for their students to ride the general ed bus with their peers, but that the need for minor accommodations, such as having a harness or epi pen available, have prevented that from happening. Over the last two years as SPS has sorted through special education busing they have been finding ways to move some of these students onto the general ed bus with their friends. It’s nice to see SPS do this thoughtful work that is bearing fruit in improved finances and, more importantly, better outcomes for students.

Crossing Guards: State law plainly says that WA will reimburse the full cost of crossing guards but the state does not allocate any funds for this. SPS has about $400k of crossing guard expenses each year. Since this is a drop in the bucket compared to special ed transportation and McKinney Vento transportation SPS doesn’t care to bring it into the lobbying discussions.

Takeaways: Continued work to make general ed busing efficient will likely save some money. One thing that SPS continually points to is the possibility of moving back to three bus tiers. This would likely result in some savings, however I’m very skeptical of the district’s perpetually increasing estimates. The 2017 School Board Action Report on moving from 3-tier busing to 2-tier busing stated that the additional cost per year would be $2.3 million total (in 2017 dollars of course). At the time the understanding was that after the switch the state would begin to reimburse the full cost, and indeed the Council of Great City Schools transportation report shows that for general education busing at least this was true, the state did fully cover the costs of 2-tier busing.

There is a much larger deficit in special education busing, and I haven’t been able to find any data showing how much of the special education deficit is driven by costs associated with 2-tier busing. Because a much lower percentage of special education transportation costs are reimbursed by the state, improved efficiency in special education busing is probably one of the best places SPS could look to reduce the transportation deficit. But given that SPS estimated the ENTIRE increase in costs of moving from 3-tier busing to 2-tier busing to be $2.3 million just 7 years ago it really stretches credulity to think that just the special education portion of this cost would add up to as much as $11 million of savings now, as SPS presented in a recent board meeting.

Regardless of how much money could be saved by moving to 3-tier busing, (and of course setting aside the trade-offs this would have for families), even if SPS approaches 100% efficiency in its transportation system there will always be a sizable transportation deficit under the state’s current funding model. SPS is required by law to provide special ed and McKinney Vento transportation and the state does not make provision to come anywhere close to funding these services no matter how efficiently they are provided.