One of the more obscure laws to emerge from the 2007 General Assembly allows local school boards to work out deals with private schools to transport their students on the same buses. Predictably, this common-sense measure was opposed by the Virginia School Boards Association on the grounds that public money should not “subsidize” private education. (Don’t you love that attitude? What? Save money? Not if it means helping those stinkin’ private schools!) But, as the Daily Press observes in an editorial today, the idea makes a lot of sense.
Any time public school buses are driving with empty seats, those buses have unused capacity. If public school systems can generate revenue from filling those seats, it comes out ahead. As the DP writes:
If a public school bus traverses a neighborhood picking up children, why should the bus for a private school – or multiple buses for multiple private schools – follow behind? Why should our roads be clogged with two buses when one could do the trick? Why should the environment be assaulted by the cars of multiple parents driving their children to private schools, when those children could all ride a single bus? It could work out well for their parents. They’re paying for the transportation operations of their local schools, so why shouldn’t they be able to use what their taxes are supporting?
It could work out well for the public schools. They could negotiate fees that would help meet their perennial need for money to pay drivers better and replace buses as they age.
In the grand scheme of things, this bill will affect education in Virginia only on the edge of the fringe of the periphery of things. But it does represent the kind of outside-the-box thinking that we desperately need to make the educational system work more efficiently and deliver better educational outcomes. Kudos to the people, whomever they are, who came up with this idea. But don’t get complacent. This represents no more than a few steps on a thousand-mile journey.