NY school districts want funding help for busing special ed students

From The New York Times:

After her son, Jake, struggled in seventh grade at Fox Lane Middle School last year, Lori Lerner of Bedford Corners decided that Winston Preparatory School, 30 miles away in Norwalk, Conn., had the right program for his attention-deficit disorder and other learning disabilities. But while the Lerners were willing to pay for a private school, they could not drive the 45 minutes each way because of work.

Instead, Jake took a bus provided by the Bedford Central School District under state law, and he has had a terrific eighth-grade year at Winston Prep, Ms. Lerner said. “I pay taxes, and I am paying for my son’s education, so I feel entitled that Bedford pays for his transportation,” she said.

But some other Westchester County school districts are hoping for relief from such transportation costs, which can run to tens of thousands of dollars per student annually. And some districts are working together to keep transportation costs down.
By law, most county districts must provide transportation to children attending private schools within 15 miles or special-needs schools within 50 miles of their district. In the economic downturn, districts are struggling to balance this transportation mandate with academic expenses and want more help from the state.

“It’s not that we don’t want to give this to the child, but we need help from the state,” said Nancy Tucci, school board president for the Rye Neck school district. “We have other constraints, and this is an uncontrollable cost.”

Rye Neck has 1,500 students and spends $1.2 million, or 3 percent of its total budget, busing children out of the district. Transportation costs for individual special-needs students can exceed $50,000 a year, Ms. Tucci said.

Larger districts are also paying more than $1 million busing students out of district: the Chappaqua district is budgeting $2.3 million for next year, the Mamaroneck district $1.4 million and the Scarsdale schools roughly $1.4 million, officials said.

The White Plains school district, which has 7,000 students, expects to spend $1.6 million next year transporting 64 children for special-needs education. That is an average of $25,000 per child, said Fred W. Seiler, assistant superintendent for business. As a city district, White Plains is exempt from transporting traditional private school students.

Affluent districts in Westchester typically get the minimum state transportation aid, 6.5 percent of their transportation costs, because it is calculated based on relative property wealth, said John Ross, assistant superintendent for business at the Blind Brook-Rye school district. Lower-income districts can get aid of up to 90 percent.

Mr. Ross saves his district money by informally sharing some bus routes with neighboring districts; he tried to set up a consortium with several neighboring districts when he went to Blind Brook eight years ago but could not get it off the ground.

“Some school districts worry that if four or five districts are in a consortium, children could be on a bus an extra 15 or 20 minutes,” he said. “But you can lower costs by routing more efficiently.”

Recognizing the problems districts are having fulfilling their transportation mandates, the State Board of Regents recommended in its 2009 state aid proposal that districts reduce costs by using administration services provided by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, said Jonathan Burman, a State Education Department spokesman.

Before going to Blind Brook, Mr. Ross set up two transportation consortiums for Boces that are still in use, sharing buses and routes. One links Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings-on-Hudson and Ardsley; the other connects Bronxville, Eastchester, Pelham and Tuckahoe.

These consortiums save $1,400 per student a year, said Douglas Carter, who manages the consortiums as transportation coordinator for Southern Westchester Boces. “We spend $6,200 to $6,700 per pupil in our consortium,” he said.

Thomas P. Higgins, assistant superintendent at the Putnam/Northern Westchester Boces, said he recently met with superintendents from 12 northern Westchester districts to discuss a possible plan for sharing or eliminating routes that cross districts.

For Ms. Lerner, having her district transport her son Jake to a private school that fits his learning style has been a huge relief.

“I am eternally grateful to have this because there is no way for my son to attend this school without it,” she said.