Greenville News Countys School Bus Fleet Will Continue to Fail if Needed Funding Isnt Addressed
How many of us think about the probability of our children making it to school safely, on time, and without incident? For those families who depend on the Greenville County school district bus system, this may be a question considered every day. If you are fortunate enough to be able to provide your own school transportation for your children, perhaps the likelihood of a safe, timely delivery of your child to school is higher. Nevertheless, as a taxpayer, you are still impacted every time a school bus breaks down.
I have not personally relied on public school transportation beyond field trips and team rides to athletic events for my children while they were in school. I consider my family very fortunate in this respect, particularly recently when there was yet another school bus incident, this time due to a suspected fire on a bus filled with students in route to Southside High School. Thankfully, there were no injuries. Undoubtedly, the students arrived late and were likely affected in their ability to concentrate and learn that school day. Families were notified either by news alerts or perhaps by their student on the bus, and fire and EMS personnel were called to the scene (thus affecting all taxpayers). This is not "new news"…this has become routine. The school bus system serving the 44th largest school district in the nation, and by far the largest district in South Carolina, is unreliable, inadequate, and sometimes dangerous.
South Carolina is the only state in our nation that provides the school buses for daily routes. In other states, individual school districts manage their own bus fleets. Greenville County would be well served to have this same control. In 2007, the State legislature voted to override then Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of House Bill 3161 to pass Act 79, addressing the transportation of students in the South Carolina public school system.
This Act required that the State Board of Education implement a school bus replacement cycle to replace approximately one fifteenth of the fleet each year with funds appropriated by the General Assembly for school bus purchases. This was great in theory but poor in practice. In fact, the last year that the General Assembly met this specific requirement in funding was 2008, the year following the passage of Act 79. The result is an outdated fleet of school buses serving all of the 76,000 students currently in the Greenville County schools, providing daily transportation, field trip transportation and transportation for school sponsored extracurricular events. All citizens are impacted either through a direct relationship with the public school system, or indirectly as a taxpayer that shares the road with these outdated buses and funds emergency responders if necessary when a school bus breaks down.
Current statistics show that 35 percent of the Greenville County school buses are over 15 years old, and 93 percent of the spare parts used for the fleet are over 15 years old. As a direct result, in the 2016/2017 school year, Greenville County school buses broke down approximately 3500 times. How many families did these breakdowns affect, and how many potential catastrophes resulted?
In the 2017 legislative session, Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed $20.5 million for new school buses which had been appropriated in the House budget, and passed in the Senate. McMaster cited his reason for the veto being that these funds would rely on money generated by the SC Education Lottery, which in his opinion, should be used solely for higher education scholarships. In that case, what is the governor's solution to the fact that we are not following the bus replacement law that was enacted in 2007?
If the Greenville County school district is to remain shackled by the state's ownership and management of our bus fleet, without regard to following the state law that requires a replacement cycle, our students will continue to suffer the consequences of innumerable breakdowns and safety concerns. Now is the time to encourage our legislators to fund our bus system according to the law set forth 10 years ago, and override the governor's veto to provide the necessary funding.
Dorothy Dowe is a board member of the League of Women Voters of Greenville Email her at lwvgreenvilleco@gmail.com.
Source: https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/2017/11/22/school-bus-fleet-continue-fail-if-funding-isnt-addressed/880283001/
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