Regional School Transportation

When districts began regionalizing, one of the incentives the state offered was 100% reimbursement of regional school transportation costs. This includes only "yellow bus" transportation for pick-up and drop-off, not Special Education transportation, field trips, etc. It has been decades since this reimbursement was fully funded; in recent years, reimbursements have been in the 70-75% range. Most districts are underfunded by hundreds of thousands of dollars, a few by over a million dollars. You can find your district's information here. There's a terrific analysis of regional transportation here, and you can find a short document on regional transportation here.

When MA does not fully fund this expense, the districts must cover the remainder and either make cuts to other school services or increase town assessments to compensate. Regional districts are not allowed to charge a fee for bus service.

The Governor's budget which was released in January 2018 for FY19 funded regional school transportation at the same level as in FY18, the House Final budget increased Regional School Transportation reimbursement by $2M, and the Senate Final budget by $7M. The Budget Conference Committee opted to finalize the budget at the Senate number, bringing the reimbursement rate from 71.31% in FY18 to 77.2% in FY19. In FY20, the Governor's budget level funded Regional Transportation from FY19. With new estimated claims of $92.3M, this reimbursement would be around 74.5%, approximately $23.4M short of 100%.