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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > July > 06
Sunday, July 6, 2008
The issues surrounding privatized busing
There’s been a lot of conversation here at GOTB about this whole notion of privatized busing since a group of independent bus companies this week made their pitch that Dayton schools should outsource transportation.
The private bus companies made some bold claims, promising they could handle Dayton’s busing at a cost that is 40 percent below what the district is spending right now. For a district that is struggling with budget cuts, a potential multimillion dollar savings is quite enticing. And Lori Ward, the district’s business operations chief, responded by inviting the companies to make proposals to a group that is studying the district’s transportation operation in search of savings.
But a decision on this is not imminent. Dayton’s busing situation is very complex and unique. A ton of questions remain about what an outside company could and could not provide and at what cost. The district also is still smarting from its last outsourcing effort with ServiceMaster, a custodial contractor.
Dayton’s transportation cost are incredibly high. Of that there is no doubt. Certainly, some of those costs are due to wasteful practices. Some are also due to factors beyond the district’s control and other costs result from purposeful acts by the district that school leaders know will raise costs but do anyway.
Here are some points to consider:
—Charter schools. Dayton has the highest percentage of kids attending charter schools of any city in the U.S., outside of New Orleans. Dayton also has a vibrant private school sector, fueled in part by state-funded vouchers. State law requires the district to bus students who attend any school — public, private or charter — and the district must absorb the costs.
Other cities like Columbus and Cincinnati that use private busing options also have charter schools, but no city has a charter school movement as big or complex as Dayton’s. The growth of charter schools has dramatically raised the district’s costs for transportation.
—Special education. Last year I wrote extensively about Dayton’s unusually high percentage of students in special education. Many of those students ride special buses the require fewer students per bus. This, too, drives up the districts busing costs.
—Exceptions. Former Superintendent Percy Mack told me this story earlier this year. A woman called him at the beginning of school year and asked if her elementary school-aged granddaughter’s school bus stop could be moved closer to home. The woman was the child’s sole caretaker (no parents were in the picture) and she was blind. The bus stop for the child was three blocks from her house, but a sexual predator lived just a few houses away.
OK, put yourself in the superintendent’s chair. How can you tell the blind grandmother no? Could you honestly tell this woman the kid will have to take her chances? Can you imagine how the superintendent would be criticized if something bad happened to the little girl after he said no?
Dayton makes tons of these sorts of exceptions. They are constantly reworking routes to avoid having bus stops near heavily trafficked roads, sexual predator’s homes or in response to parent requests and complaints.
The district could save a ton of money by telling everyone that there will be no exceptions and then building routes solely based on efficiency without regard to the safety or convenience of students. It doesn’t do that, in part because school leaders don’t want to alienate their customers.
The companies say they make money by being ultra efficient and using systems honed through experience in many districts over many years. Here are a couple of examples.
Consider bus purchases. First Student, which was represented Monday, is a huge company and a company official at the meeting said it is the biggest school bus buyer in the world, having just completed a billion-dollar bus purchase this year. When you buy buses in huge volume you get deep discounts. So the companies can put vehicles on the road for a much cheaper price than any single school district can.
Or consider the issue of idling. One company official told me their studies showed it is better for drivers waiting to pick up students in cold weather to let buses idle. In the summer, they should turn the buses off. That’s because it uses more fuel to re-warm a cold bus than to idle. The companies train drivers in bunches of small efficiencies like these.
Still, the big savings comes in what is called “route efficiency.” That is doing exactly the opposite of what Dayton does now when it comes to exceptions. To really drive down transportation costs, companies use sophisticated software to design routes that minimize stops and wasted gas (UPS famously designs routes to avoid left turns, which burn more gas.)
The more efficient the routes, the more can be saved and the more profit for the outside company. The company has high incentive not to deviate from those routes. Of course this can conflict with the district’s customer service needs. As I stated above, customer service is the main reason Dayton deviates so often from the most efficient routes. Privatizing busing puts those decisions in the hands of an outside company, creating an inevitable tension where a balance will need to be struck.
Privatization in the past. In recent years, the district has explored the idea of outsourcing busing, but they have not done so. One big reason is that many administrators are still smarting from the 1990s experience the district had when it outsourced custodial work to a national company called ServiceMaster, a contract that was a total disaster.
Here’s what school officials say drove them crazy about that contract. First, there was a breakdown in authority. If there was, for instance, a mess at a school and the principal wanted it cleaned up he could ask the custodian to take care of it, but the custodian’s supervisor was not a DPS employee. So if the mess did not get cleaned up, the best the principal could do was complain to the ServiceMaster supervisor. He could not discipline the custodian.
Also, administrators were frustrated by the rising cost of the contract. ServiceMaster initially underbid what the district was spending on custodial work, but over a few years those costs escalated to surpass what DPS paid for the service in house. At the same time, administrators say service declined as ServiceMaster provided less personnel and fewer supplies and materials each year. Again, school officials were limited in their power to demand more.
When Stan Lucas came in as treasurer, one of the first things he did was propose scrapping the ServiceMaster deal. In fact, DPS paid $1 million to buy out what was left of the deal and rid themselves of the contract. Some administrators are wary the same issues could arise with outsourced busing.
—Neighborhood schools. There seems to be a misconception out there about this. Folks, court-required cross-town busing ended in Dayton in 2002 and all Dayton kids are currently permitted to request enrollment at the school closest to their homes.
When that policy change was made, the district braced for a slew of transfers. The 2002 school board won a big victory for its bond issue by promising neighborhood schools and nothing polled higher during the bond levy campaign than the desire among Dayton voters for neighborhood schools.
But guess what? Given the option to switch to a neighborhood school, Dayton families stayed put in huge numbers. Few transferred. The reasons why are many. Parents wanted their kids at schools where they knew the teachers, or where their siblings attended, or that were close to their homes, workplaces or day care.
Even before charter schools, Daytonians have been conditioned to expect choice in education. Going back into the early 1980s, the district’s integration plan included magnet schools and parent choice options. The genie is out of the bottle and it is hard to put it back in.
At this point, trying to force neighborhood schools onto a city that has come to expect its choice options is problematic and risks angering the district’s customers (and its voters). But it would save a lot of money on transportation.
Instead, the district is trying to use its school construction program to redefine school boundaries. When schools close, they try to reassign kids to the schools closest to their homes and they have set boundaries around the new schools and kids nearby get first choice to enroll.
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