OPINION|
by Peter Gariepy, Ladue
Missouri lawmakers ought to get on board with enhancing transportation reliability for college students all through the state.
College transportation funds are more and more wanted as many households with school-age youngsters and faculty districts deal with a extreme scarcity of certified bus drivers. Throughout Missouri, from Kansas Metropolis to St. Louis to Springfield to Jackson, college districts and households are navigating a scarcity of bus drivers who’re routinely underpaid for the significance of their work.
In line with the Economic Policy Institute, the variety of college bus drivers nationwide declined by 15%, or roughly 29,000, between 2019 and 2023. Contributing to this troublesome shortfall, the common American college bus driver earned $565 per week in 2023, which is 43% lower than the median weekly wage of $990 for all staff. Whereas the scarcity is a nationwide drawback, funding for varsity transportation is predominantly generated on the state and native ranges.
Previous efforts to deal with Missouri’s college bus driver scarcity have been lackluster as they didn’t present further funding to extend wages. Final 12 months, the Missouri Home of Representatives handed HB 1626, sponsored by Consultant Danny Busick, R-Newtown. The invoice, which didn’t cross the State Senate, sought to alleviate the issue by elevating the age from 70 to 77, at which an endorsed noncommercial driver’s license have to be renewed yearly slightly than each three years.
Now could be the time for Missouri lawmakers to re-examine their assist for a value confronted by each college district. Whereas different state sources of school funding are distributed based mostly on the price of educating a pupil at high-performing districts, common every day attendance, or the variety of college students who obtained free or reduced-price meals, state transportation funds apply a need-blind formula to reach at a college’s district’s Reimbursable Value.
Statewide college transportation funding for the 2025 fiscal 12 months was budgeted at $361,366,614, or 75% of the total reimbursable value. The funding hole of $120,455,538 is roofed primarily by native property taxes, gross sales and use taxes, and private property taxes. Sadly, the quantity a college district is entitled to is unlikely to be what it ought to count on to obtain from the state within the coming years.
Below 2024 laws often known as SB 727, funding for college transportation in Missouri has turn out to be more and more weak. Below the invoice, there isn’t any longer a minimal share of Reimbursable Prices that faculty districts can depend upon receiving. With out that protected share, the state’s contribution to pupil transportation is anticipated to drop because the state budget constricts and extra taxpayer {dollars} are redirected to the MO Empowerment Scholarship Account Program (MO Students). MO Students pays for personal college tuition and has struggled to draw tax-credit-incentivized donations, in keeping with a September 2024 article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Earlier than diverting any extra taxpayer {dollars} from public faculties to personal faculties, Missouri’s lawmakers ought to harness the chance of the present legislative session to advance a invoice that establishes protected funding for 100% of each college district’s Reimbursable Value. By doing so, lawmakers can make sure that Missouri’s younger minds usually tend to arrive safely and on time for varsity.
Peter Gariepy is a Missouri CPA with a private curiosity in how our tax system may be higher utilized for better public profit. He serves on the Ladue College District’s Board of Training.
