Private school busses
All public schools have to provide buses for private school students Or offer a cash payment instead
What LL says....State law mandates either transit or a specified amount in lieu of stipend. So school districts decide which schools merit running a bus, and which are more cost effective to deal with via cash payment.
They are taxpayers in your town, correct? Busing isn't free, it's paid for with tax dollars.
walker said:
Seems
a little off to me, if you opt out of public school why should the
public school system be responsible for transportation. If you can
afford private school you can afford to get your kids there.
Why are you complaining? They're doing you a favor. They pay taxes yet they don't burden the public schools with their children, a burden that can easily be about 15,000 per child per year.
edited to correct.
susan1014 said:
I'm not complaining. I'm stating facts.
Sorry, susan. I didn't mean you. I must have clicked on the wrong response. I meant walker.
Do not know what the present cost of private school busing is, but when I lived in Maplewood and sent my kids to private school the cash payback from the district was something like $700 or $800. Bus was not provided because it was more cost effective for the district to pay the cash than run a bus to that particular school, but I think the Summit private and Catholic schools are in enough of a geographical cluster so that it may work better for the district to pay for a single bus to take SoMa kids there--I think it used to do that. In any case, as noted elsewhere, the transportation policy is state law, not a boondoggle arranged by disaffected SoMa families.
Personally, I was a pretty active PTA person when I sent my older child to the district schools, did my part to be a constructive member of the community, and had no qualms either about switching to private school or taking the relatively modest cash payment in lieu of transportation. We literally paid our dues and kept doing so for years after the children had graduated.
Note, too, that a number of good local private schools give scholarships and some of the scholarship kids live in the district, not in affluence, and also ride the bus to private school. Not every private school choice is made because the parents have money to throw around. Sometimes it is just a good option for a given child or family, and not something anyone should apologize for.
As susan1014 stated above, it is New Jersey state law that dictates that if a school district "provides transportation to its resident students who attend regular public school programs, it must also provide transportation services to students attending nonpublic schools." The nonpublic school must be no more than 20 miles away and the district cannot exceed a certain cost per pupil, also set by statute. If the district cannot provide transportation to a nonpublic school student without exceeding that amount, which I belive was $884 in 2014, then it shall give this amount to the student's parents/guardians as "aid in lieu of transportation".
The district may, under the statute, apply for state aid to help defray these transportation costs.
For reference, the relevant law is Title 18A. N.J.S.A 18A:39-1 defines who is eligible for the transportation or aide in lieu of, and N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-57 discusses the calculation for determing state aid to a district.
I don't know the legislative history of the law; do know it's been on the books since at least the 90s.
Given the cuts being made to the school budget each year which have resulted in cutting some programs/services important to members of our community, it is understandable that some of us might disagree with the State Law requiring that public school districts provide busing for students attending private school.
Some persons will argue that the amount paid to families in lieu of providing transportation is a small price to pay for the reduced pressure that private school attendance places on our public school system. Others would argue that families sending their children to private school will be less apt to support the programs within the public school system, not just financially but through their personal participation. Still others would argue that it is the most motivated students/parents who flee the public school system, bringing down the overall caliber of the student body/home school association.
So, the answer to your question is "Yes." The district does provide busing or equivalent compensation; and, some persons don't like the fact that this policy exists.
BG9 said:
walker said:Why are you complaining? They're doing you a favor. They pay taxes yet they don't burden the public schools with their children, a burden that can easily be about 15,000 per child per year.
Seems
a little off to me, if you opt out of public school why should the
public school system be responsible for transportation. If you can
afford private school you can afford to get your kids there.
edited to correct.
I disagree. The marginal cost of one or several kids in the district is nowhere near as much as the cost of transportation. I'm not even sure that the marginal cost for ALL of the private school kids would be as much as the cost of transportation since transportation is pretty much a "per head" cost, while the children being in school would be spread all around the district in various classrooms and would only increase the cost in a non-trivial way in cases where there were enough children in the same school/grade that an additional class/teacher would have to be added. And I suspect that most parents who choose private school would not change their mind about that if the transportation subsidy was eliminated.
I wonder how many teachers we could hire with the money that would be saved if we did not have to pay for this?
Probably not very many. On the one hand, you're arguing that there are not enough private school kids to impact district costs if they stayed in public school, but on the other hand you're implying it is enough to allow the schools to hire more teachers. It would take about 100 kids back in district to afford one more teacher. I doubt that's a cost effective trade off.
ParticleMan said:
Probably not very many. On the one hand, you're arguing that there are not enough private school kids to impact district costs if they stayed in public school, but on the other hand you're implying it is enough to allow the schools to hire more teachers. It would take about 100 kids back in district to afford one more teacher. I doubt that's a cost effective trade off.
No, I'm implying that the cost of transportation to private school could probably pay for some new teachers. And if those 100 kids are spread across K-12 and all the various schools, chances are that very few new teachers would be needed. And, as I said before, I doubt that many parents would change their minds about private school if they lost their transportation subsidy.
kriss said:
As susan1014 stated above, it is New Jersey state law that dictates that if a school district "provides transportation to its resident students who attend regular public school programs, it must also provide transportation services to students attending nonpublic schools." The nonpublic school must be no more than 20 miles away and the district cannot exceed a certain cost per pupil, also set by statute. If the district cannot provide transportation to a nonpublic school student without exceeding that amount, which I belive was $884 in 2014, then it shall give this amount to the student's parents/guardians as "aid in lieu of transportation".
The district may, under the statute, apply for state aid to help defray these transportation costs.
For reference, the relevant law is Title 18A. N.J.S.A 18A:39-1 defines who is eligible for the transportation or aide in lieu of, and N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-57 discusses the calculation for determing state aid to a district.
I don't know the legislative history of the law; do know it's been on the books since at least the 90s.
Kriss is right about this. I just wanted to point out some of the odd consequences of NJ's private school transportation law.
Only districts that are required to bus their own gen ed kids are required to bus or pay Aid in Lieu for private school kids and only if those kids live beyond a certain distance from their private school. The threshold for required bussing in NJ is when a K-8 child lives more than 2.0 miles from his/her school or a 9-12 child lives more than 2.5 miles from his/her school. This means that a larger district like SOMSD is required to bus or pay Aid in Lieu for private school kids, but compact towns like Verona and Glen Ridge are not.
K-8 private school kids get transportation if they live more than 2.0 miles from school. 9-12 private school kids need to live 2.5 miles away. This means that the SOMSD provides some transportation help to SOMA kids who attend Pingry, MKA, St. Rose of Lima, and Newark Academy but usually not to SOMA kids who attend OLS (unless they live more than 2.0 mi away).
The $884 Aid in Lieu amount is set in statute. I've been told that it has been that amount for a very long time. If you object to private school transportation being partly paid for by taxpayers than be comforted that slowly it is being whittled down by inflation.
The private school transportation law dates to the late 1960s. At the time it was not constitutional to give private school parents money to offset tuition since the private schools could provide "religious indoctrination" with that money, but it was constitutional to pay for "peripheral" things like transportation.
There are other subsidies for private school education too in NJ, like nursing, textbooks, and now security, but those moneys are state dollars, not local dollars. The state, for reasons I don't know, doesn't give money directly to private schools, but it can give the money to school districts and districts can give the money to private schools. Business Admins call the state moneys for private schools "pass through dollars."
We have 6500 students in SOM schools. It has been reported that 12% of all kids in the two towns go private. So approx 900 kids go private. 900 x $800 for bus= $720,000.
If 900 kids were to stay in public, and for ease of arithmatic, if divided across all schools (9 schools), that would be 100 per school. If 100 per school, in a 6 grade elem school, were to show up, that would be 16 per grade probably warranting a new classroom per grade. 6 elem schools x 6 new classrooms = 36 new teachers. 2 middle schools x 3 grades = 6 new teachers and HS would be 4 new teachers. Total new teachers would be 46. 46teachers x $40,000 salary = $1,840,000.
Not sure what I'm proving, but I thought a little math could help.
ffof, thanks for doing the math...saved me the trouble!
(but the key thing is that this law seems unlikely to be changed, and we have much bigger school issues to lobby for in Trenton)
The maximum payout is $884. I'd bet that the average payout is a lot less than $800, therefore, ffof's estimate looks too high.
Why would the payout be lower than that? I thought the payout occurred if the district could not provide transportation for less than the cutoff?
ETA: though if the district is providing any transportation, then that will change the equation...
ffof said:
We have 6500 students in SOM schools. It has been reported that 12% of all kids in the two towns go private. So approx 900 kids go private. 900 x $800 for bus= $720,000.
If 900 kids were to stay in public, and for ease of arithmatic, if divided across all schools (9 schools), that would be 100 per school. If 100 per school, in a 6 grade elem school, were to show up, that would be 16 per grade probably warranting a new classroom per grade. 6 elem schools x 6 new classrooms = 36 new teachers. 2 middle schools x 3 grades = 6 new teachers and HS would be 4 new teachers. Total new teachers would be 46. 46teachers x $40,000 salary = $1,840,000.
Not sure what I'm proving, but I thought a little math could help.
Right, but we all know that very few (if any?) private school families would switch back to public if they lost that $800 so it is pretty well certain that if the requirement was eliminated, the district would save several hundred thousand dollars (whatever the actual figure is) which could pay for quite a few teachers. (However, I suspect that the actual cost per teacher is higher on average since there is more than just salary to count.)
My boys go to private schools and yes, they do take the school bus coming home but we usually drive in the a.m. We pay for tuition (our choice) but we are ineligible to opt out of paying our share of taxes into the public school system. We still pay our taxes and yes, our boys get bus service to private school.
And to add, they're not private school buses. They're the same yellow buses used by the district.
If you do a choice transfer within the district (not M/J or SB, but just family choice), you are also responsible for your own kids' transportation. I don't see why it should be any different for families who freely choose private school for their children.
And someone mentioned "need-based" above, but I don't see how anyone voluntarily choosing to pay 5-figure tuition can justify "need" for $800 for transportation. If they have that kind of financial need then they can stay in the public school. If they have a child with special needs or an out-of-district placement for some other reason then I don't have a problem with the district providing transportation, but that isn't what we are talking about here.
The payout isn't based on mileage -- it's a flat fee that you get as a check after submitting paperwork via the school and district.
You get that OR district bussing to the other school. It's not your choice -- if SOMSD, for ex, sends a bus to the Summit schools, your kid can take the bus or not. You don't get to choose having the cash.
However, if the private school offers bussing, and you choose to pay for it, you pay whatever it costs. It's likely to be more than the 884, but will vary dep on where you live.
It's entirely possible to go to a local private on a district school bus or go to local private on a private school bus.
It might surprise you to know that a significant portion of students at area independent schools receive need-based financial aid.
walker