The Issue

Busing students from the City of Buffalo to charter schools outside the district will cost the Buffalo Public Schools more than $1 million.

FACT:

The current busing arrangement is revenue neutral: the Buffalo School District is reimbursed for transportation costs. 85-90% is reimbursed by the state, with the remainder coming from the charter schools.

Furthermore, under the current transportation agreement, seven area charter schools provided the Buffalo Public Schools with a loan of nearly $1.5 million. This loan was designed to mitigate any adverse impact to district finances that pre-paying for transportation a year in advance may have caused.

State regulations prohibit busing to charter schools outside the city, as well as to charter schools within the city on days that traditional city schools are not in session.

FACT:

This idea represents the altering of an existing policy based on a re-interpretation of a long-standing State Department of Education law. By changing policy on nothing more than an interpretation, the Buffalo Board of Education's decision may not survive the scrutiny of a higher legal authority.

Students living in the City of Buffalo will benefit from the cost savings of revoking the bus transportation agreement.

FACT:

The decision to revoke bus transportation services will potentially endanger charter school students by forcing them to get to school on their own.

Also, a majority of students at the affected charter schools are from the City of Buffalo and receive free or reduced-price lunches. That means that many of these families live at, or below, the poverty line. By ending the long-standing agreement to provide busing services to charter schools, the Buffalo Board of Education will be doing nothing more than making life even more difficult than it already is for hundreds of city families. Buffalo schools have an obligation to serve Buffalo students, don't they?

Cutting bus transportation gives families another reason to move out of the City of Buffalo, taking their public school funding with them to a different district.

Further, those charter schools that decide to do right by their families and continue to provide transportation will have to bear the financial burden themselves, without the ability to access reimbursement funding from the state. Currently, the law allows districts like Buffalo to be reimbursed, but does not extend the same courtesy to individual charter schools. Money spent on buses is money that could have been spent on enriching educational programs.

The Buffalo School Board has been open with the charter schools on the issue of a transportation agreement.

FACT:

In November 2008, charter schools first learned of the Buffalo School Board's desire to eliminate transportation to out-of-district schools by reading about it in The Buffalo News.

More recently, Buffalo Public School staff members insisted that area charter schools sign a memo of understanding waiving all of their legal rights in case any new agreement that was reached fell through for any reason. The memo also allowed future boards to back out of the agreement at any time without any notice or legal repercussions. The charter schools refused, district staff ended negotiations, and the issue was immediately brought to the school board.

Charter schools can afford to pay for transportation with some of the federal stimulus monies they will be receiving next year.

FACT:

Unlike traditional public school districts like Buffalo, charter schools are not eligible to receive federal stimulus funds. Not one penny. On the other hand, Buffalo Public Schools, according to the Buffalo News, will be receiving $18.5 million in additional federal funding next year.