Getting There

“The wheels on the bus go round and round …”

Or do they?

Beginning next fall, all public schools in Maine will be required to provide transportation for pre-k students. This is good news for many parents who live far from pre-k sites and might otherwise have to forgo pre-k for a neighborhood daycare center. Similarly, pre-k providers worry that they lack of transportation, especially for half-day programs, impacts enrollment of low-income children. Yet as school officials in Maine are beginning to realize, providing safe transportation for pre-k can be complicated and expensive.

Busing in pre-k isn’t just about convenience, it’s also about safety. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that a school bus is the safest way for a pre-kindergarten child to get to school — safer than walking or riding in a private vehicle. School buses are heavier, have stronger frames and compartmentalized seating, which have shown to best protect small children in crash tests. There are also environmental benefits to transporting children to pre-k via bus, rather than each of their families driving separately to school.

But schools can’t just put pre-kindergarteners on a bus with all the bigger kids. Child safety experts say that children under 40 or 50 pounds (which includes most 3- and 4-year-olds) should also be secured in weight- and height-appropriate restraints. There should also be an adult present on the bus (in addition to the driver) to mind the safety of the children on board.

Most states do not require school districts to provide transportation to pre-k, but many districts do so anyway. The Department of Education estimates that in 2001, 52 percent of pre-kindergarten students in public schools received transportation services, and that number is growing. Many of these pre-kindergarteners, however, ride on buses without restraints or the attendant monitor. That alone makes many parents nervous.

Despite the safety benefits, many school districts find the cost of adding safety restraints and safety monitors prohibitive. Retrofitting a bus to include safety restraints can require a total overhaul of the vehicle. Salaries for safety monitors are a critical barrier for districts that transport students on multiple bus routes.

A telling example is the experience of Head Start, which in 2004 began requiring restraints and monitors on all vehicles transporting Head Start children. (Head Start does not require grantees to provide transportation for all students.) A school district in Kentucky, which transported 3,900 Head Start students on 266 buses, reported that retrofitting buses would reduce seating capacity, requiring the purchase of additional vehicles. Hiring monitors for all 266 buses would cost millions of dollars. In the Philadelphia area, school districts told Head Start that the costs of the rule change will require them to curtail transportation services for Head Start Children.

These funding and safety issues for pre-k transportation underscore the value of incorporating pre-k (transportation costs included) into school funding formulas. This is especially important as the current economic downturn has prompted many school districts to cut back on transportation for pre-k.

Yet the costs of converting transportation fleets to accommodate safety standards for younger children suggests that extra, one-time funding may be needed to help with the transition, either for retrofitting buses or developing a new system that includes separate vehicles for younger children. (These upgrades could also benefit kindergarteners, many of whom are also too small to ride safely on more traditional school buses.) This funding puzzle can become even more complicated in districts (usually in large cities) that contract annually with third party providers to transport kids to school.

When it comes to pre-k, getting there may not be half the fun, but demands for pre-k transportation and safety standards should not be overlooked. Transportation is an important part of designing a comprehensive early childhood program that ensures that low-income children who most benefit from pre-k have an opportunity to participate — and a critical part of making sure children arrive to school ready to learn.