Our View

Our View

Never let bureaucracy get in the way of common sense

Most of us realize that our school districts are responsible for providing transportation for their students.

But what they may not be aware of is there is a funding formula that just seems to have been designed by a bunch of nincompoops.

Instead of funding school buses based on actual cost the state uses our tax dollars based on flat per-student rate.

What these so-called “educated” decision makers fail to take into account with this per student formula is that this funding mechanism is simply not equitable.

Currently, the state hands over to schools $321.20 per student for transportation costs, but we’re told it costs far more to transport rural students, who are spread out over a large area, than urban students.

A 2013 study by the Bureau of Legislative Research showed that some students in Arkansas spend as much as 5 hours and 34 minutes on the bus each school day.

That, in our opinion, could be viewed as cruel and unusual punishment.

We’re told lawmakers are seeking an attorney general’s opinion on whether they can change the formula.

For example, if the Legislature were to pass a 90minute maximum, 106 school districts would require more funding for buses, drivers and fuel in the amount of bout $2.7 million a year. If the ride time was limited to no more than 50 minutes, 130 districts would need an estimated $25.2 million to meet that goal, the study showed.

We’re also told about one-third of the state’s school districts’ transportation costs are covered by the state funding. The other two-thirds need somewhere between one dollar and big dollars to spend on transportation and “they use a lot of other things … to fund that transportation,” according to Richard Wilson of the Bureau of Legislative Research.

Wilson used the example of West Memphis where student transportation is $110, but in Mount Judea, the spending is $1,100 on transportation – a tenfold difference.

While lawmakers are being told that it is easy to estimate transportation costs based on route miles, lawmakers seem to think they aren’t sure if they can change funding to reflect route miles instead of number of students.

This is because of the multiple legal challenges involving education funding and the decisions made by Arkansas Supreme Court justices. Justices found the state did not provide an equitable or adequate education to students across the state. The education committees were given the job ensuring “equal educational opportunity for an adequate education,” under Arkansas Annotated Code 10-3-2102.

The formula shows that $321.20 in per-student transportation funding is part of the $6,646 the state provides schools for each student a year. That funding model came about because of the court’s decision on a funding case brought by the now-defunct Lake View School District.

Bottom line is that the funding formula was clearly designed by bureaucrats with their heads stuck in the sand and not giving a darn about students spending hours on buses each day. This is an absolutely disgraceful. What were these so-called leaders and bureaucrats thinking about when they came up with this ridiculous formula?