School busing costs questioned

BY ERIN MILLER | WEST HAWAII TODAY

Education officials have had almost five years to bring down bus transportation costs, but haven’t done so, the chairman of the state Senate’s Ways and Means Committee said Friday.

“What would compel me to feel there would be a change in how bus transportation is handled, because if there isn’t, we might as well blow it up,” Sen. David Ige said. “It doesn’t seem like the department is capable of managing bus transportation costs.”

Ige’s comments came, in part, to comments from James Kauhi of the Department of Education’s Transportation Services Branch and Assistant Superintendent Randy Moore, who spoke during a joint Senate and House education committee hearing Friday. The hearing was broadcast online.

“It’s out of the department’s hands,” Kauhi said, answering a question from a representative about what the DOE does to monitor variables that increase busing costs. “It’s a little difficult to control. What we can control is which students are eligible to ride and which are not.”

The department doesn’t even have much control over the contracts, Moore added.

Ige pointed out legislators asked the DOE to look into lower bus costs as far back as 2007, then made a similar request in 2010.

Kauhi said finding a baseyard where the buses may be parked is one of the biggest hurdles to contractors making competitive — and lower — bids to offer bus service.

“If baseyards are a hurdle, that really drives costs up, then I think that’s something we need to delve a little deeper to, even looking outside of the inventory of DOE lands,” Sen. Jill Tokuda, D-Kaneohe, Kailua, Enchanted Lake, said during the joint Senate and House education committee hearing. The hearing was broadcast online.

The contracts already pay for buses, said Ige, D-Pacific Palisades, Pearl City, Waimalu, Upper Aiea, Aiea Heights. That’s the other expensive component of the busing contract.

“If it’s four baseyards on Oahu and two on the Big Island, we ought to identify the parcels,” he said. “It seems like doing those two things going forward would ensure a more competitive environment.”

Legislators called the hearing to question DOE officials on a request for an additional $25 million to cover transportation costs. Moore told legislators that would be enough to pay only for bus costs on the neighbor islands. To continue offering buses to Oahu students, other than students the state is mandated to transport, such as special needs students, would cost another $17 million, Moore said.

The DOE has already combined some bus routes and changed some contract terms, Moore said. That has brought about some savings, but not enough to offset the significant decreases in funding from the state Legislature, he said.

The cost to bus students is about $800 a year; families pay $270 to $288 per student annually for students to ride the bus, Moore said. More than half of students statewide are able to ride the bus for free, though, because they qualify under one of several criteria, including receiving free school meals.

In the West Hawaii Area Complex, 4,695 students, about 44 percent of the total 10,300 students, ride the bus. Of those, 2,992, about 49 percent, ride for free, a DOE spokeswoman said.

House Education Committee Chairman Roy Takumi, D-Pearl City, Momilani, Pacific Palisades, Manana, noted the nearly $500 difference between the cost of busing a student and what parents are paying for the service. He asked whether the department checks with families to see if they need the bus service, say if the family has no car or has one or two vehicles.

No, Moore said, need is not considered if parents are able to pay the bus fee.

“That’s pretty bad arithmetic,” Takumi said. “These are families that don’t need to have their child take the bus, and they can afford to pay more. If we tease out those number of kids, the taxpayers are subsidizing those families then? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

emiller@westhawaiitoday.com