Transportation funds saved, thanks to quick advocacy and legislative response
$248 million cut instead to be taken from revenue limits
Published: February 7, 2012
Thanks to some nimble advocacy by CSBA and other members of the education community, funding that helps get students to school has been spared from the chopping block, at least for this school year.
Responding to concerns about a $248 million cut to the state’s Home to School Transportation Program, triggered in December by insufficient state revenues, CSBA and other members of the Education Coalition helped move Senate Bill 81 to replace the transportation cut with an across-the-board reduction in revenue limits in the same amount. The revenue limit cut, while undesirable, was generally deemed to be more equitable. The bill was swiftly passed by the state Legislature and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown Feb. 2.
The transportation funding cut would have impacted small, rural districts disproportionately. A CSBA analysis of transportation costs revealed that many smaller districts must spend as much as thousands per student to get students living in remote areas to class.
After CSBA helped make the news media aware of how their local districts would be impacted, news outlets around the state took it from there, prompting strong public support for protecting transportation funding.
"Home-to-school transportation is about the worst place to cut because it hits districts so differently," CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations Dennis Meyers told the Los Angeles Times, calling the cuts “a killer” for many districts that rely on busing to get remote students to school.
Charging families for transportation, or relying on parents’ ability to drive their students to school, are not viable options for most of these districts, Meyers explained.
Considerable work remains if schools are to retain the transportation funds in the 2012-13 budget year, however, as the governor’s budget proposal completely eliminates those categorical dollars and assumes districts would pay for transportation through a weighted student funding formula that makes dollars more flexible. The details of such a funding formula have yet to be worked out and likely would be part of a larger discussion about renovating the state’s education funding model.
An analysis of the impact of the governor’s 2012-13 budget proposal on Proposition 98 is available from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.