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Opening debate in the House on his bill, HB 256, House Education Chairman Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, said, “The purpose is to make districts be as efficient as possible.” Transportation costs are “overhead,” he said. “Each dollar spent on transportation is a dollar that doesn’t make it into the classroom. … That’s where education takes place.” He said the idea is to cut the state reimbursement to school districts from 85 percent of their busing costs to 50 percent, but still give the districts the same money through state budget-setting, so they’d have an incentive to make better use of their busing money. The bill also makes a change in the reimbursement rules that’d cost the Boise school district nearly $1.5 million, and bans any state reimbursement to districts for busing for field trips, permanently. Overall, the state would save $4.1 million next year. Nonini said in a future year, lawmakers could “re-do this legislation so that when times are better we will bring back money for field trips.”
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slfisher on March 25 at 10:56 a.m.
There’s a lot more to it than that.
a) Schools have to pay transportation. The argument that ‘it should be put into teachers instead’ is specious. Cutting this ends up cutting education further because the kids have to get to school.
b) What’s the purpose of ending field trips permanently? If it’s an emergency bill, then sunset its provisions.
c) Charter schools aren’t getting cut commensurately, which isn’t fair to public schools.
d) Students in urban areas are being penalized out of proportion.
e) This bill wasn’t written with the involvement of the stakeholders, but by politicians.