Finding Your Way Through
the Budget Maze

Districts must be ready for every twist & turn

Stephane Babcock | Associate Editor

To someone who has never had anything to do with budget preparation, the idea of figuring out a year’s worth of costs for multiple departments might be as fun as doing the two-step over hot coals while drinking cod liver oil. To the men and women who dance their way through rising costs, decreasing state aide and fluctuations in both student attendance and driver retention, the process is part of their duty as transportation directors and business managers.

“A budget is a plan that takes into account three sub plans, transportation being one of them,” said Jonathan Ross, assistant superintendent for finance and facilities at the Blind Brook-Rye Union Free School District in Westchester County, N.Y. “The transportation director is looking at how he/she can transport X number of kids for X number of dollars and still meet their needs. It’s a tricky budget to put together.”

The process, which for many begins in the fall, must predict new costs due to contractual salary increases, the rising price of fuel and newly instated emission regulations. To Ross, a budget is a financial estimate of need.

“I look at last year’s financial statement and how fiscally sound we are in the current year, and try to predict next year’s costs. You should look at last year’s numbers as historical information to predict the budget for next year,” said Ross.

Sometimes changes are made in the budget that are not communicated with the transportation director, according to Rick Ring, executive director of support services for St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont, Colo., and director of custodial and transportation services for the Association of School Business Officials International.

“The biggest problem is not having the money to do everything everyone expects,” said Ring.

Other factors can also have a huge impact on districts. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which ensures free transportation for homeless children to and from their original school of choice no matter what district the family currently resides in, can increase costs exponentially.

“If I have a student in a district that becomes homeless and gets put in a shelter in another district, we work with that district to make sure his education is not disrupted,” said Ring. “Sometimes it involves transferring a student two or three times to save costs.”

Special needs costs can also be tricky to work into a budget. In Westchester County, driving the 1,050 eligible students to and from school costs Ross’ district $470,000 a year, which works out to $448 per student. For the students who travel outside of the district for special needs, the combined cost is $446,000, which breaks down to $5,625 for each of the 80 eligible students, or approximately 12 times the price of transporting in-district students.

“When we have 1 percent of the student population going 15, 20 or 30 miles outside of the district for special education or parochial/private schools, we need to be ready for the increased costs and how to keep communication open with the special needs administrators,” added Ross. “I have to budget $75,000 for bus monitors next year, as required by some students IEPs, as well as door-to-door service.”

Field trips can also become the bane of budget preparation. Policy in some districts mandates a certain amount for activity trips, and when it is depleted, there are simply no more trips available. Other districts are more lenient.

“All the teachers in all the grade levels want to go on some sort of field trip,” said Terry Voy, school transportation programs and services director for the Iowa Association of School Boards. “You don’t get that information ahead of time; it’s an unknown. You have to try to base it on the previous year.”

In some states, funding for education is rolled into a per-student grant, which can cause its own set of problems.

“In Michigan, it varies between $7,000 and $12,000 per student. Some districts no longer offer bus transportation because of the costs,” said Karen Losch, executive director of the Michigan Association for Pupil Transportation (MAPT). “Everyone is trying to find a way to save a dollar. All areas are being looked at to save money and stretch the dollar. Some districts are spending thousands of dollars to keep buses running because they can’t afford to spend $75,000 to buy new ones.”

At the beginning of March, MAPT held a pupil transportation summit to talk about lowering the costs of transportation by working cooperatively between districts, counties and government agencies.

“Michigan has a huge problem with funding education right now,” added Losch.
Meanwhile, some school boards are exploring the possibility of charging students instead of cutting the service all together.

“We investigated going into a fee structure, where students would pay for transportation, as a recommendation from a task force. We are going to attempt to increase property taxes instead, but it may happen in the future,” said Ring.
Tim Ammon, vice president of Management Partnership Services (MPS), said help is available so districts can stretch their dollars and find extra money in areas that previously eluded them.

“We go in and operate efficiency reviews, look at routing and scheduling activities, and evaluate maintenance and fleet programs,” said Ammon. “We help school districts save money or improve services. It depends on what they are looking for.”

The Iowa Association of School Boards works with MPS to give districts a price break by helping to set up contracts and market MPS services around the state.

“Sometimes we suggest changes in leadership and go out and do some recruiting. We help structure the questions and conduct the interviews. There is typically a routing problem caused by either bad bell times or old routes that need to be updated. We frequently suggest redesigning or even cutting routes,” said Ammon.

But cutting routes may not always be the right answer and should be well planned before its implementation. In New York City, the revised bus routes masterminded by Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting company hired by the city to drive unnecessarily spent funds into necessary departments, caused chaos for parents and school officials.

“It’s a business of kids and education, and the decision was motivated by saving money,” charged Ross. “You don’t do it overnight; it’s something they should have phased in over three years, or had five different groups working on the matter at once. The checks and balances were not there.“

School districts can sometimes save money, as well as time and headaches, by bidding out services from one of the many school bus contractors.

“For certain target contracts, we track the expiration dates to anticipate the bid solicitation,” said Michael J. Kennedy, vice president of operations, Northeast Region, for Student Transportation of America. “Otherwise, the bid reporter service notifies us when the bid advertisement is first placed, or we read it in the newspaper or hear about it through an industry contact.”

Preparing a bid can sometimes take up to two or three weeks, depending on the size of the district and number of students eligible for service. Communication can help move the process along quicker.

“Some districts are very open and communicate freely. This open approach gives them the advantage of the most competitive prices by making the prospective bidders as knowledgeable as possible about the specific characteristics of a particular contract,” said Kennedy.

In the end, a budget is only as good as the people who worked together to make sure every base was covered.

“I’ve done my job well if I spend 98 to 99 percent of what I have in my budget,” concluded Ross. “Your best transportation directors are those with a motivated workforce and who route their buses really well.”