Part 1: Importance of Transportation Access in Education
A quality education helps all students maximize their potential. A high school graduate earns almost $200 more per week than somebody who does not graduate from high school. That difference equals almost $500,000 over a 50-year career. Over the last 20 years, public charter schools have emerged as an alternative to traditional geography-based public schools. Charter schools benefit students in two ways. By offering a different curriculum, which in many cases is more rigorous than what is offered in traditional public schools, charters provide a different educational pedagogy than public schools. In addition, charter schools introduce an element of competition that can make public schools better because they have more autonomy and flexibility than traditional public schools. More than 40 states and the District of Columbia offer charter schools.
However, traditional public schools and public charter schools offer very different types of school bus transportation. In Georgia, traditional school districts are required to provide school bus transportation to all students living 1.5 miles or further from school, although many actually provide bus service within that range, particularly for elementary school students. For example, Atlanta Public Schools provides buses to students who live more than one mile away from elementary school and 1.5 miles or more away from middle and high school.
Charter schools are not required to, and usually do not, provide free transportation for any students. After surveying transportation policies published by 95 public charter schools across the state, only 17 report regular, reliable school bus routes (see Part 3.2 for more details). The majority of charters in Georgia leave transportation entirely in the hands of families.
Part of this lack of transportation offerings is due to funding. Charter schools in Georgia generally receive less funding than traditional public schools, although the level of the funding disparity depends on several factors including where the charter is authorized and whether it is authorized by the state. Charters and traditional districts are funded through the same state funding formula, and both local and state-approved charters receive supplementary funds to help equalize their revenues with traditional districts, although those supplementary funds don’t always put them on equal footing (for more details, see Part 3.1).
Further, the state has dramatically increased school bus funding for public schools. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s 2025 budget increases the state’s share of transportation operations costs from 17 percent in the 2024 school year to 40 percent. In recent years, Georgia has provided additional state funding for transportation, both for operational costs and to replace older, less fuel-efficient school buses. Because charter school transportation funding is tied to traditional district transportation funding, these investments may also help more charters offer transportation in the future.
However, even with additional state investments, there are still other barriers inhibiting charter transportation. First, charter geographic boundaries can be larger than traditional school boundaries, if the schools are not neighborhood charters. Rather than being limited to certain catchment zones, many locally approved charters serve entire school districts, widening the potential distance over which they’d have to transport students. State charters face this problem to an even greater degree, since they usually are open either to all students statewide or to multiple school districts.
A second barrier is that K-12 transportation in Georgia is usually limited to traditional school buses, which are expensive to maintain and operate. Charters are already at a funding disadvantage, and they are operating with substantial independence from the districts they reside in. Understandably, many charter operators can’t financially justify operating expensive traditional bus routes when there are many other items in the budget vying for resources.
This lack of transportation access leads to an uneven playing field between traditional public and public charter schools. Many parents, who would otherwise choose charter schools, choose public schools because they do not have to worry about transportation. This divide is particularly pronounced among lower-income and minority households. For many wealthier parents, driving to work earlier, later or via another route in order to take their children to a charter school is merely an inconvenience. But lower-income families may not have a vehicle or may be forced to work during the morning drop-off or afternoon pick-up windows.
This brief will examine the components of school funding, regulations and operations. Part 2 examines funding for traditional public schools and Part 3 examines school district transportation regulations and operations. Part 4 examines funding for charter schools while Part 5 examines charter school regulations and operations. Examining charter schools more deeply, Part 6 examines barriers to new charter school transportation, while Part 7 examines funding and policy alternatives for charter school transportation.
Part 2: Traditional K-12 Public Transportation System Funding
Public school districts in Georgia are required by law to provide transportation for students living more than 1.5 miles from their residentially assigned school. The law grants the State Board of Education authority to make rules for school buses and school transportation. These rules include school bus specifications, minimum bus driver compensation and qualifications and other safety standards. School transportation is also governed by state education and traffic laws pertaining to transportation contracts, student safety, equipment and other items.
Part 2.1: Operations and Ridership for Traditional Attendance-Based Public Schools
In the 2022-2023 school year, Georgia school districts operated 7,154 regular school bus routes and 1,412 special education bus routes for students living beyond 1.5 miles from their assigned school. Districts also voluntarily provided 2,615 additional bus routes for students residing within the 1.5-mile boundary. In total, school buses served 51.9 percent of Georgia school district students—or just under 857,000 students—with about one-fifth of that group living within 1.5 miles from school.
Part 2.2: School District Transportation Funding
Notably, the state education board determines how state funding is allocated to help districts meet the statutory transportation mandate. These determinations are made by requiring school district officials to complete student transportation funding surveys, wherein they detail their transportation needs based on uniform and efficient bus routes, the number of students living within and beyond 1.5 miles from their assigned school and certain special transportation needs, such as students with disabilities or students participating in vocational education programs.
According to the Michigan-based School Finance Research Collaborative, states typically use one or more of three primary methods to fund transportation:
- Base formula funding: The state includes transportation funding in its main K-12 finance formula, often as a per-student amount. The per-student amount often doesn’t include considerations for district density or other factors that cause variations in transportation costs. For example, Arkansas’ K-12 funding formula provides a flat transportation amount of $321.20 per student, although districts are not required to spend those funds explicitly on transportation since they are lumped in with other unrestricted cost assumptions.
- Separate transportation formula funding: The state provides transportation funding through a separate formula that often considers the number of transportation-eligible students, miles traveled, district density and cost efficiency. As an example, Alabama allocates bus driver positions and bus driver support personnel to school districts based on daily bus routes, fuel costs and positional salary assumptions. Their formula also includes an allowance for bus fleet renewal. State transportation allocations in Alabama are ultimately based on available funding in the state’s primary education revenue source, the Educational Trust Fund.
- Cost-based reimbursement: The state reimburses school districts based on actual transportation costs. Generally, reimbursements are based on either allowable transportation expenses or a fixed percentage of actual costs, and they often aim to incentivize efficiency. Nebraska, as an example, reimburses school districts for regular transportation at a rate of $1.91 per bus mile and includes different reimbursement rates for special education students and students enrolling in a district who reside outside its boundaries.
Georgia primarily uses a reimbursement approach to fund transportation. Using information provided in each school district’s most recent transportation funding survey, the state allocates funds based on several basic assumptions. First, the state examines district bus routes for transporting students who live more than 1.5 miles from school. Any bus routes for students within 1.5 miles aren’t included in funding considerations. The formula assumes one driver per bus and provides funding for fuel, maintenance and other operations costs on a per-mile rate that adjusts for school bus types and usage. Additionally, the formula provides funding for bus insurance, drug testing and bus driver wages all based on standardized assumptions.
Importantly, the state only reimburses a percentage of calculated operations costs—which is intended to cover fuel, maintenance and other general operations costs. In other words, once the state calculates actual operations costs, it commits to funding only a certain percentage of those costs. Under the governor’s FY 2025 budget, the state funding rate for operations costs is 36.7 percent and total state transportation funding for school districts is $353.8 million. The formula is summarized in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Georgia K-12 Transportation Funding Formula
Table 1 displays the different factors that comprise state pupil transportation funding.
Table 1: State Pupil Transportation Grant Formula Factors and Total Amounts, FY 2020-FY 2025
| School Year | Drivers Funded | Driver Wages (per driver) | Drug Testing (per driver) | Bus Insurance (per bus) | Operations Cost Reimbursement Rate | Bus Replacement Funds | Total State Pupil Transportation Amount |
| 2020 | 8,685 | $10,058.61 | $53 | $500 | 16.5% | $0 | $135,434,948 |
| 2021 | 8,696 | $10,256.68 | $53 | $500 | 14.9% | $40,154,400 | $176,516,490 |
| 2022 | 8,707 | $10,256.68 | $53 | $500 | 15.8% | $62,667,219 | $199,208,462 |
| 2023 | 8,566 | $10,802.55 | $53 | $500 | 15.5% | $62,667,219 | $205,427,745 |
| 2024 | 8,447 | $11,345.18 | $53 | $500 | 13.9% | $62,667,219 | $211,417,414 |
| 2025 | 10,424 | $11,803.98 | $53 | $500 | 36.7% | $0 | $353,759,373 |
Table 2 shows bus utilization in Georgia. Table 2 breaks down the numbers from lowest utilization to highest utilization.
Table 2: FY25 Operations Cost Reimbursement Amounts per Mile
| Bus Capacity | Cat. 1 (lowest bus utilization districts) | Cat. 2 | Cat. 3 | Cat. 4 (highest bus utilization districts) |
| 16-20 | $1.4250 | $1.4337 | $1.6170 | $2.1454 |
| 21-33 | $2.0673 | $2.0799 | $2.3458 | $3.1123 |
| 35-36 | $2.6233 | $2.6393 | $2.9768 | $3.9494 |
| 47-48 | $2.8799 | $2.8975 | $3.2680 | $4.3358 |
| 53-54 | $3.0225 | $3.0409 | $3.4297 | $4.5504 |
| 59-60 | $3.4359 | $3.4569 | $3.8989 | $5.1729 |
| 65-66 | $3.5643 | $3.5860 | $4.0445 | $5.3661 |
| 71-72 | $3.7781 | $3.8012 | $4.2872 | $5.6880 |
| 78-90 | $4.3484 | $4.3749 | $4.9343 | $6.5466 |
Part 3: Traditional K-12 Public Transit Systems Regulations and Operations
Public Schools in Georgia are required to abide by very specific transportation regulations.
Part 3.1: Regulations on Traditional School Buses
The Georgia Department of Education provides detailed specifications for the four types of school buses that districts can use. Type A is a small school bus similar to a van or cutaway that can carry 10-17 passengers. Type B uses a stripped chassis and can carry more than 10 people. Type C is a body installed upon a chassis and can carry 30-48 people. Type D is a body installed along a stripped chassis and can carry 10-60 people.
Of the four types of school buses, most districts use Type C and D buses to transport their general student populations and Type A and B buses to transport special needs students. Rural districts and some magnet schools or districts also use Type C and D to transport general student populations.
Part 3.2: Bus Driver Operators
In most districts, these buses are operated by district employees. Drivers must meet minimum requirements such as being at least 18 years old, passing an annual physical and maintaining a class A, B or C Georgia Commercial Driver’s License. Districts must meet certain requirements including paying drivers a minimal salary and a minimum 24 hours of training.
One of the challenges of school transportation is finding bus drivers. School bus driver is not one of the best paying occupations. In a tight labor market and with near record-low unemployment, finding drivers has proven to be very challenging. At the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, as a result of a severe driver shortage in Jefferson County, Kentucky, some students did not get home until 10 p.m. on the first day of school. The district had to cancel classes for the remainder of the week until it could find enough drivers. Chicago Public Schools is relying on traditional public transit vehicles (the Chicago Transportation Authority) instead of district employees.
School bus drivers are required to obtain a Commercial Driver’s License, and workers with a CDL are in high demand. The trucking industry currently has a driver shortage, and it is more lucrative to work in trucking than in student transport.
Part 4: Charter Schools Funding
Charter school transportation funding can vary significantly from traditional public school transportation funding.
Part 4.1: Charter School Transportation Funding
There are three types of public charter schools in Georgia—those authorized by the State Charter School Commission (SCSC), those authorized by local school districts and conversion charter schools. For simplicity, conversion charter schools can be considered as no different from other locally approved charters. According to the Georgia Department of Education, there are 98 operational charter schools for the 2024-2025 school year. Forty-six are district-authorized charters, two are conversion charter schools and 50 are State Commission charter schools. District-authorized charter schools are funded through individual school districts. State-authorized charters, on the other hand, are funded as if they are independent school districts. Unlike traditional public school districts, public charter schools in Georgia are not required by law to provide transportation.
Although charter schools receive less overall funding than traditional public schools in Georgia, they receive a roughly equal share of transportation funding. Locally approved charter schools receive a portion of their authorizing district’s state transportation grant—either on a flat per-student basis or an eligible rider count—whether they provide transportation or not. Local charters also receive a proportional share of local funding raised by the school district they reside in—although the proportional share excludes local revenues for capital bonds, debt service funds and local option sales taxes for capital projects.
On the other hand, state-approved charter schools receive a proportional share of state transportation funding. Unlike local charters, state charters don’t receive any local funds. However, state charters receive the “State Charter Supplement,” which consists of a proxy for local funding, a proxy for capital outlay and categorical grants, part of which are earmarked for transportation.
In FY 2023, state charter schools received $105 per student for transportation purposes, which is equivalent to the per-student state share of transportation funding that school districts receive. However, the average public school district in Georgia spends $684 per student on transportation, largely due to the fact the local funds are the primary revenue source for transportation services at traditional public schools. Problematically, the local proxy funding state charters receive is capped at the statewide average amount per student. This calculation disadvantages charter schools in property-wealthy, higher spending areas relative to their neighboring traditional schools. Additionally, the flat transportation amount state charters receive is different from the differentiated funding that districts receive. In FY 2023, district transportation funding varied widely in per-student terms from district to district—from less than $50 per student in districts like Forsyth and Henry to more than $400 per student in small districts like Hancock and Stewart.
Despite numerous provisions in state law aiming to equalize funding between traditional and charter schools—including giving charters a proportionate share of transportation funding—charters are still at a substantial funding disadvantage in Georgia. In fact, brick-and-mortar state approved charter schools in Georgia spend 27 percent less in per-student terms than the state’s school districts—or $3,990 less per student. Similarly, locally approved charters in Georgia are also at a funding disadvantage (see Table 3).
Table 3: Average K-12 Spending Per-Student at Traditional School Districts, State Charter Schools and Local Charter Schools
| School District Average Expenditure Per Student | State Charter School Average Expenditure Per Student | State Charter $ Spending Gap | State Charter % Spending Gap | Local Charter School Average Expenditure Per Student | Local Charter $ Spending Gap | Local Charter % Spending Gap |
| $14,726 | $10,737 | -$3,990 | -27.1% | $13,336 | -$1,391 | -9.4% |
While it appears that local charters are at less of a funding disadvantage than state charters, this is largely because local charters are concentrated in higher-spending school districts. When local charters are only examined in the districts where they are concentrated—and compared with spending in those districts—the spending gap widens (see Table 3).
Table 4: Local Charter School Spending in Metro-Area School Districts
| Authorizing District | District Avg. Expenditure Per Student (exc. local charters) | Local Charter Avg. Expenditure Per Student | Local Charter Spending Gap |
| Atlanta | $27,622 | $18,379 | -33.5% |
| Savannah-Chatham | $16,173 | $12,948 | -19.9% |
| De Kalb | $18,641 | $10,451 | -43.9% |
| Fulton | $16,304 | $10,429 | -36.0% |
There are a few reasons for these persisting funding gaps. While all charters are funded under the same funding formula as traditional public schools—the Quality Basic Education (QBE) program—they tend to receive fewer resources because they have less experienced staff (a factor considered in the QBE) and because they don’t receive a full equivalent share of local revenue or other state grants.
Closing the funding gap, while important, likely won’t lead to widespread provision of transportation for charters. School district transportation funding is closely tied to traditional school bus routes, and state transportation regulations make it difficult for any type of K-12 school to provide options outside of traditional yellow bus routes.
Altogether, the gaps in funding between districts and charters, the rigidness of the district transportation funding formula, school transportation regulations and the larger attendance boundaries cause most charters to only provide limited transportation or forgo offering any transportation at all.
Part 4.2: Analysis of Transportation Funding for Districts and Charter Schools
Before some additional funding was added to replace more than 1,700 school buses statewide starting in FY 2023, Georgia’s state transportation grant covered a diminishing share of actual school district transportation expenditures. The FY 2025 budget includes a large increase in transportation funding, reversing the diminishing share of state education funding devoted to transportation.
Figure 2 shows the State Pupil Transportation Categorical Grant and expenditures that districts make above that level. Less than 20 percent of state grant funds cover total district transportation expenditures.
Figure 2: Share of School District Transportation Expenditures Covered by State Transportation Grant, 2013-2023
In the 2022-2023 school year, Georgia’s transportation funding model covered about 18 percent of actual school district transportation expenditures, a modest increase in the state share of transportation costs compared to the previous ten years. Local school district taxpayers cover the bulk of the state calculated operations expenses as well as any additional costs for short-range bus routes, transportation support staff who aren’t drivers and bus-driver wage supplements. This practice is relatively common nationwide, as all states fund K-12 education through a mixture of local and state revenues. Prior to 2022-2023, the state covered a declining share of transportation expenditures due to the increasing expense of school transportation, lags in state formula assumptions over the past decades and increases in costs not recognized by the formula. However, two recent state infusions — $188 million in 2022 to replace more than 1,700 school buses statewide over three years and an increased transportation budget for FY 25 – caused the state share of transportation costs to rebound.
Part 4.3: Current Transportation Offerings
Since charters are not required to provide transportation, each school makes its own decisions . Therefore, the only way to determine the transportation services offered by Georgia charter schools is to examine each school’s policies individually. A review of each charter school website, including parent handbooks and school FAQ pages, revealed that charter schools usually do not offer any kind of transportation support.
This review of individual policies covered 49 locally approved charter schools (conversion charters are counted as locally approved) and 46 state commission charter schools. These figures differ slightly from the state directory because one local charter not listed in the directory still appears to be active, three state charters are virtual and thus excluded, and one state charter in the directory is closed.
Of the 95 in-person charters in Georgia, 58 leave transportation responsibility entirely to parents and guardians. Of that number, 11 of the charters are in urban settings where public transportation is available, and in some cases the charters may offer subsidized transit cards.
Further, those charters that do offer transportation often do so only in a limited fashion. Beyond the charters not offering their own transportation, 18 more run limited bus routes. These limited routes are usually either satellite bus routes—where children are picked up from a small number of central locations—or limited-capacity bus routes where families must apply and are not guaranteed a bus seat. In some cases, families must pay a fee for bus transportation. All told, only 19 of the 95 charters reviewed by the authors appear to offer regular, reliable school bus transportation for families outside of a walkable distance or out of reach of public transit.
This review of charter transportation policies, though not comprehensive, clearly illustrates that charters can’t typically offer reliable transportation. While some of this may be attributed to a lack of fair funding, some charters also face the unique challenge of having wider geographic boundaries, although local charters have more fixed boundaries. Locally approved charters only serve students within a singular district, but unlike traditional public schools many of them lack attendance zones —expanding the potential range of travel. State charters face even steeper challenges, since most of them either don’t serve a specific district or serve multiple counties.
Consequently, further equalizing funding for charters and traditional schools won’t overcome the boundary issue. Beyond fairer funding, charter schools and the families they serve need access to options beyond traditional school buses.
Part 5: Charter Schools Regulations and Operations
While big yellow buses may be a good fit for some traditional public schools, they are proving problematic for districts that are smaller, more rural or less densely populated. For public charter schools, school buses are not viable. Passenger vans and automobiles purchased by parents, agencies, or non-profits are two promising, emerging options. This part details both options.
The standard bus may not be the best transportation option for all schools or all students. First, buses require drivers with a CDL license, something that is costly and only needed for the larger vehicles that seat more than 20 students. (There are actually three different types of CDL licenses. School bus drivers must have a class B CDL, which is required to operate a single vehicle that isn’t hitched to a trailer with a combined weight greater than 26,000 pounds, and obtain a school bus (S) endorsement by passing a specialized knowledge exam through an FMCSA approved training process.) Second, buses come in a limited number of sizes; none are available that seat fewer than 10 people.
Part 5.1: Current Options
However, there are other transportation options available for different student populations. For vehicles, some school districts have examined purchasing 15-passenger vans. These vans are used in metro areas by vanpools, which are an informal commuting relationship where 7-15 people who live in the same geographic area and work in the same geographic area share a ride to work. They are a low-cost, high-quality alternative to traditional rail and bus services in areas with lower population- and employment-density.
However, as Part 4 details, there are legal and safety challenges to 15-person vans.
Federal law prohibits automobile dealerships from selling a van that seats more than 10 passengers for the purpose of school transportation, unless the vehicle complies with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards as detailed in Part 4. While there is no prohibition on the sale of used vehicles or the leasing of new vehicles, such actions might invite legal action. Unlike personal automobiles, vans are not required to be equipped with electronic stability control. Partly as a result, these types of vans are also more likely to roll over than the average vehicle due to the higher center of gravity and lower roof support. While the rollover risk is still very low, vehicle safety is an important and sensitive topic with children.
For this reason, most schools that buy smaller vehicles instead choose minivans. Indeed, some school brokers specialize in the 10-person or fewer van market. These vehicles seat between six and 10 people and are placed between full-size vans and traditional automobiles. Some vehicles are minivan-like but designed for the commercial market. They are designed to operate for more miles and be more cost-effective. For example, they might not have all of the luxury features of consumer vehicles such as heated seats. Many of these vehicles are wheelchair -accessible. Schools can also purchase minivans from automobile dealerships, although districts can probably get better deals through the commercial marketplace.
Part 5.2: Future Options
There are no federal restrictions on any vehicles that seat fewer than 10 vehicles and the federal government does not govern the use of those vehicles. Smaller vehicles that seat between six to 10 people can be driven by those with a regular driver’s license. This could be parents forming carpools, as already occurs for many traditional elementary schools. It could be individuals retired from full-time work who still want a part-time job. It could also be professional drivers who have a professional driver’s license but would prefer to drive a regular vehicle.
Clearly, the market for minivans seating fewer than 10 people could be expanded. One potential model is the HopSkipDrive platform that sets up students with drivers that the company has vetted. The system is used in California, Colorado and Washington. The service focuses on homeless and foster youth but also serves other students. The service also provides rides for senior citizens and private school students. It provides recurring (every day) transportation but can also provide one-time service. The company has driven 61 million miles, completed 3.3 million rides and served more than 10,000 schools.
Part 6: Legal and Fiscal Challenges to New Charter School Transportation Options
There can be legal, financial and budgetary challenges to giving charter schools new transportation options, which can threaten entrenched interests or upset the status quo. There are also impediments to reform. Each will be detailed in the following part.
Part 6.1: Legal Challenges
Clearly, charter schools face challenges in providing transportation. Equal funding is one challenge, but there are also legal challenges inhibiting the availability of non-traditional transportation choices for all types of schools.
One barrier to using vans for transportation is The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which governs transportation safety and has some very particular standards. Part 4 discussed how the agency does not allow school districts to transport students in vans that seat 10 or more people. In addition, under current NHTSA guidelines the van must have all of the current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, including features such as yellow paint, reflective tape, stop-arms and flashing lights. No current vans meet this standard. It is challenging to circumvent the standard because current surface transportation law penalizes dealerships up to $10,000 per vehicle, or $15,000,000 total for multiple violations.
While minivans face less opposition than regular vans, one sticking point could be liability risk. When another parent or another driver transports a child to school, they take on the liability risk for that student. However, that is no different than the liability risk that schools accept. While schools try to shield themselves from liability requests through release forms, the courts have repeatedly held that those forms are not enforceable. Similarly, many parents are engaged in informal carpools, for which liability is shared.
Part 6.2: Financial Challenges
Most fundamentally, the lingering financial challenges are the overall cost of traditional school bus transportation, the fact that current transportation funding is so heavily tied to traditional bus routes, and the fact that charters don’t always receive equal funding to traditional public schools.
Georgia’s state funding rate for transportation operations costs was 13.9 percent in the 2023-2024 school year and increased to 36.7 percent in the current school year. While the increase in state transportation funding is sure to assist both traditional public schools and charters (since the charter transportation amount would increase in-kind), financial challenges will remain for several reasons. First, the increase in state transportation funding won’t solve the funding gap between districts and charter schools since charters still won’t have access to the same level of local funds that traditional schools do. Additionally, even after an increase in state funding, local taxpayers will still be shouldering much of the cost for school transportation.
This dynamic creates funding disparities not just between districts and charters, but also between districts with varying local tax bases. It’s also not likely that an increase in state transportation funding will lead to a significant augmentation of current school district transportation services. Instead, these new state funds will probably largely be used to supplant expenditures previously covered by local funds. One local superintendent is predicting this outcome: “Transportation is primarily the responsibility of the district, so any increase is welcomed. We will use the money to offset as much local expenditures as possible and any FY 25 state increases that are in the governor’s budget,” Haralson County Schools Superintendent Jerry Bell told WLBB Radio in April 2024.
It’s likely that some share of increased state transportation funding will only supplant existing local resources being spent on transportation, meaning that increasing state funding might not actually increase driver pay or the services districts offer. Shifting financial responsibility from the counties to the state will not improve student transportation.
Part 6.3: Budgetary Challenges
Overall, traditional school bus transportation has become more expensive over time and bus ridership rates have declined. Labor costs have increased, and operations costs including fuel vary based on external factors. While the average school bus driver salary is $39,000, that has increased significantly from less than $30,000 in the past 10 years. And school buses transport only 21 million children to school, less than half of the school age population. For example, many parents choose to drive their children to school instead of letting them take the bus. Parents should feel free to choose their preferred method, but this does not help schools with economies of scale.
Part 7: Funding and Policy Options to Improve Charter School Transportation
To improve equity between traditional public schools and charters, there are two types of changes that Georgia can make. The first is making direct changes to the student funding formula to try to equalize funding. The second is making wholesale changes to the funding program, new enrollment zones or new transportation options.
Part 7.1: Direct Changes
For direct changes to the student funding formula, the state should build on recent efforts to further equalize funding between charters and traditional public schools. For locally approved charters, this entails giving them a full per-student share of local funds (i.e. including local debt service and local option sales tax funds).
Similarly, state -authorized charter schools should receive more equitable funding through State Charter Supplement funding. While state charters already receive an approximate equal share of state transportation grant funds, the fact that the local proxy funding is capped at the statewide average local funding amount gives charters in wealthier districts—like Atlanta and Fulton, where charters are mostly concentrated—generally fewer funds to support transportation services than what traditional schools in those districts can supply locally. To fix this, local proxy funding for state charter schools should instead be made equal to the per-student local funding in the county school districts that the charter serves.
Part 7.2: Indirect Changes
In terms of wholesale changes, charter schools have three major options:
7.2.1: Adopt in-lieu of transportation funding:
States like Nebraska, Wisconsin and Arizona offer transportation subsidies to families as a substitute for transportation services. In Nebraska and Arizona, these subsidies may be requested through local school districts and can be a solution for school districts to limit costs when transporting resident students or to help provide transportation for students attending schools of choice. In Arizona, charter schools may also use their transportation funding to give direct grants to families as long as they submit a plan to the state department of education.
This approach could also be applied for students in locally authorized charters in Georgia. In other states, in-lieu of transportation allocations, subsidies are often given directly to families to offset costs for carpooling or other privately purchased transportation services. For local charters in Georgia, any funds provided directly to families would need to be deducted from the district’s payment to the student’s charter. For state charters, the State Charter School Commission would likely need to calculate payments for applying families that include a portion of the transportation grant amount and a portion of the local proxy funding and subsequently deduct those funds from direct payments to the participating student’s charter school.
Alternatively, Georgia can create a state reimbursement program for charter school families. In Wisconsin, low-income families participating in the state’s open enrollment program—which allows students to attend schools outside of their resident school district—may apply for a state reimbursement to offset their transportation costs. For the 2022-2023 school year, the maximum reimbursement was $1,219 per child. In the 2020-2021 school year, the latest year with available data, more than 1,000 Wisconsin families received a state transportation reimbursement.
7.2.2: Incentivize the adoption of transportation and/or enrollment zones in city districts:
Most charter schools in Georgia are concentrated in metro areas. Atlanta Public Schools, DeKalb County, Fulton County and Chatham County contain most of the state’s charter schools. While leaving the provision of transportation as a decision for each charter school to make gives them flexibility, it may lead to cost-prohibitive inefficiencies since individual charters often lack the scale to run their own bus routes. Additionally, the Atlanta and Savannah-Chatham school systems both have public school choice options that allow families to attend traditional public schools that are within the district but outside of their residential boundaries. Consequently, both traditional and charter school students in these areas may benefit from utilizing a more streamlined bus system that serves students participating in either form of school choice. Denver Public Schools in Colorado can serve as a case study.
Public school choice in Denver Public Schools is popular. There are 53 charters in the district and over 200 traditional public schools. Due to the breadth of choices, the district sorts some families into “enrollment zones” rather than single-school boundaries. The district runs bus routes that give these families access to multiple schools in their enrollment zone, including charters.
Still, another 42 percent of the students in the district attend a public school outside of their enrollment zone—which requires a different transportation approach. Outside of multi-school bus routes, Denver addresses some of these transportation challenges for students traveling outside of their enrollment zone with shuttle-style bus routes. Launched in 2011, the Success Express serves students in the Far Northeast and Central neighborhoods of the city, which are some of the more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of Denver. These shuttles run in regular increments for several hours in both the morning and afternoon and drop kids off at more than 40 different schools, including charters.
To be sure, there are persistent transportation challenges in city school districts across the nation that have embraced public school choice. Giving families more options, by definition, expands the potential range of travel. In Denver, there are still families that fall through the cracks of the available transportation services and have to shoulder the burden themselves by carpooling or paying for public transit. However, the advantage of a more streamlined bus system like that used by Denver is that it achieves some of the economies of scale that equal per-student funding for charters alone can’t necessarily solve for in Georgia.
7.2.3: Relax regulations on the use of non-bus vehicles for school transportation:
The state board can choose to relax regulations for non-bus vehicles, as the board did in 2022 for certain populations of high-need students. While vanpools might have some challenges, any vehicle with 10 or fewer passengers is not subject to NHTSA regulations. These vehicles are typically sold on the consumer market, meaning they come with the latest safety features including rollover prevention and airbags for both front and rear seat passengers. Further, many parents already drive these minivans which are some of the safest vehicles on the roadway.
Part 8: Conclusion
Charter schools have proven to be a real blessing for Georgia students. By offering a different curriculum, which in many cases is more rigorous than what is offered in traditional public schools, charters provide a different educational pedagogy and curriculum than public schools. In addition, they introduce an element of competition that can make public schools better. However, the schools cannot provide a more rigorous education or competition if students cannot access them.
Many public charter schools in Georgia do not provide transportation. The burden is on the parents to transport their child to school. First, this creates an inequitable solution between traditional public and charter schools. Second, this places lower-income students, many of whom have parents who do not own a vehicle, at a disadvantage. These are some of the students who benefit from charter schools the most.
The biggest cause of a lack of school transportation for charter schools is the overall funding gap for charter schools. Transportation discrepancies are one of the effects of this gap. Providing charters with per -pupil funding equivalent to traditional public schools would be the biggest way to solve this problem. But the challenge is more than funding. Procuring the right-sized vehicle can also be a challenge. Many charter schools live in a geographically dispersed area. This increases the per-student cost and makes traditional school buses a less economical option. Further, there are certain safety and legal challenges with some of the non-traditional transportation options that school districts want to avoid.
First, overall charter school funding needs to be level with traditional public school funding. Second, schools need to make better use of minivans that can transport up to 10 students. Minivan drivers do not need a CDL. More importantly, these vehicles do not have the safety concerns of vanpools as they have the latest stability control technology. Further, they meet all federal guidelines since they have fewer than 10 people.