K-12 Enrollment / Transportation Data
2004-05 School Year

Editorial Note About Data Collection

Data presented here was reported in the December 2005 edition of theSchool Transportation News Buyers Guide. The Guide is an directory of industry information published annually in December. Altogether, 25 states reported for the 2004-05 school year, with the remainder reporting data for the 2003-04 school year and some reporting data for the 2002-03 school year. The lag is usually due to reporting procedures in the state, as states provide the latest data available.

Transportation and enrollment data is supplied to the magazine by the pupil transportation section of the state department of education, though occasionally pupil transportation resides in some other agency of state government. There are also several states that do not have a central pupil transportation office; data from these states may not be available. Transportation data is self reported and unaudited. It is based on data collected by the states or other organizations such as reimbursement formulas by which state governments reimburse school districts and school bus contractors for transportatation service to public, private and charter schools.

Column 3 reports total student enrollment by state. Column 4 shows the number of students transported daily one-way by yellow bus service at public expense.

Column 5 shows the number of yellow school buses, route and spare, in the fleet in the state on a given day during the school year reported. These data do not include public mass transit vehicles that provide student transportation, either regular route or charter.

States may define the cost of pupil transportation and the counting of student rides differently, therefore, caution should be exercised when seeking to compare states as the varying methodologies and differing reporting periods simply do not allow precise comparison.