Schools would also get more money based on the pupils that they are transporting.
State Rep. Desiree Tims, D-Dayton, a bill co-sponsor, said schools were not buying new buses during COVID-19 because students weren’t going to school, so many districts are behind on replacing those buses. Districts have also fallen behind on maintenance, she said.
Tims also criticized the Ohio law requiring public schools to transport charter and private school students who live within their boundaries. Most states only require public schools to transport their own students.
Tims said the law, which was created in the 1960s, was “archaic” and didn’t allow for goodwill between public school transportation, parents and charter schools.
State Rep. Phillip Robinson Jr., D-Solon, who sponsored the bill, said no matter where he has gone in the state, he hears from people about how the bus system is not working, particularly in urban areas and rural areas.
He said he believes this is a way for public, private and charter schools to work together better.
“I definitely understand the choices parents have to make to send kids to school,” Robinson said. “At the end of the day, however, I believe the first principle we need to adopt here is that public schools’ dollars are for public transportation for public school students.”
State Rep. Phil Plummer, R-Butler Twp., said he thinks the bill has potential and would like to work on it, though he said he wished the bill had been introduced as bipartisan.
He said the current busing system clearly doesn’t work for anyone, as charters and public schools blame each other for failures to get kids to school.
“We’re swimming upstream if we don’t educate our kids,” Plummer said.
Todd Silverthorn, executive director of the Ohio Association of Pupil Transportation and the transportation supervisor for Kettering City Schools, noted the cost of buses has significantly increased since he began his career.
“The Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation fully supports the proposed funding in House Bill 545,” he said. “These grants would provide meaningful financial assistance to school districts and could allow districts to allocate more of their local (levy) budgets toward other important safety investments, such as bus cameras and additional safety equipment for students and drivers.”
Effect on DPS
Dayton Public Schools Superintendent David Lawrence said the portion of the bill allowing the district to negotiate start times with charter and private schools would “provide us some material relief.”
In the current system, private and charter schools set start times and tell public schools when they will start and end school. The public schools must transport on that schedule and are fined if they do not get students to school within a 30-minute timeframe.
This setup has been a headache for Dayton Public Schools in particular, because about half of the students living in Dayton attend a non-DPS school. Most of these schools start at 8 a.m. and elementary students are required by law to be bused if they live more than two miles from their building.
The result is DPS elementary schools mostly start at 7 a.m. or at 9 a.m. Charity Adams and River’s Edge, both DPS magnet schools, are the only DPS elementary schools that start at 8 a.m.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
Lawrence said being able to set times is a “significant plus for us in terms of efficiency,” allowing for fewer uncovered routes and the ability to transport students to after school and daycare partners.
Lawrence said the additional funding to buy buses is nice, but for DPS, it’s not a matter of having enough buses. It’s also a workforce issue, since the district would need to hire 175 to 200 drivers to cover all routes, and bus drivers are difficult to hire and hold on to in 2026.
He said he plans to advocate to local representatives to better cover the gap between what the district spends on transportation versus what the state reimburses them.
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