COLUMBUS, Ohio — School is back in session, and students are utlizing public transportation offered by their individual school district.

An Ohio state law requires districts to transport certain students to non-public schools as well, but the cost of that transportation is becoming a hot topic.

What You Need To Know

  • Ohio state law has certain requirements in place to provide public transportation to non-public students

  • The law has existed for several years, and its apart of the funding formula 

  • However, depending on distance, districts can refuse transportation if its more than a designated amount of miles

Ohio schools districts spend more than a half a billion dollars per year getting students to school and back home. But the number of students who choose charter, parochial or other non-public schools changes every year.

State law requires districts to provide transportation for non-public students. Districts can refuse to provide transportation when they deem it is impractical to provide it, such as when the distance is too far. In most cases, this occurs when the student lives more than 30 minutes from the school they want to be taken to. 

"There are about 660,000 public students riding school buses as of last year," said Doug Palmer, who is a Senior Transportation Consultant at the Ohio School Boards Association. "And, the T-1 report in October that was put forth says there's about 53,000 non-public students that would include private and community school students." 

Transporting all of those students is not cheap for the school district. Palmer says more than $600 million went to keeping those yellow buses on the road last year. When districts decide it is impractical to provide those rides, they offer families a stipend to cover the costs.

The payment in lieu of transportation for 2023 to 2024 varies per pupil. The minimum payment for the 2023-2024 school year is $596.43, and the maximum is $1,192.87. 

"Columbus has the request from 162 non-public schools to do transportation for them and that's a lot," Palmer said. "That's a big number. And, that means that their resources are divided between a lot of entities, and that's pretty much the same scenario for all of the big eight schools." 

The Ohio Education Association provided Spectrum News 1 with data and found that—on average—bus drivers are driving more miles to transport non-public school students compared to public school students.

"It is a disproportionately large number of miles that the bus routes have to cover," said Scott DiMauro, the President of the Ohio Education Association. "Because, often these schools are located outside of the school district. So, you're transporting kids who live in the district, and in some in some cases in a very inefficient system." 

State Senator Andrew Brenner has been a long-time advocate for non-public students riding the yellow school buses. He believes students, whether they are public or non-public, deserve to have proper transportation to get to and from school in a safe manner. 

"We have the funding for transportation," Brenner said. "Its estimated to transport about 663,000 traditional public students and about 31,000 private school students, and 11,000 community school students. So, we've put all of a substantial amount of money into the funding formula to make sure that all students are able to be transported. So, these excuses that they (districts) can't transport the kids is inappropriate." 

What’s the penalty if a school district decides to not transport a student? Well, transportation funding can be withheld.

If the district is found to be out of compliance, it would get a warning and would need to submit a corrective action plan. Then, if it remains out of compliance, 25% of its daily state transportation funding is withheld. And, if it becomes a pattern of five times or more, then all state transportation funding is withheld. 

If you would like to access public data on schools, costs and their reports click here.