Hasty busing amendment creates big problems
Lawmaking at its finest this was not. It all began this spring when the Colorado House passed House Bill 1306. The bill allows foster kids to remain enrolled in their school when they move to another district and addresses other challenges these students face.
Once in the Senate, lawmakers added an amendment to allow school boards to provide transportation to any student who attends their schools but lives in another district. Senators also scrapped a decades-old law requiring school districts get permission to bus in students from other districts. The amended bill passed in the House without opposition even though the chamber had rejected a similar busing provision earlier in the session.
Maybe they should have read the final bill.
Even though he thought the added provisions violated the Colorado Constitution’s singlesubject requirement, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed the bill into law, effectively pawning off the responsibility to make that determination on the judiciary. This week, six school districts and education groups sued on those grounds. Because the busing provisions have wider implications than the subject of the law, litigants will probably pre- vail.
In essence, the legislature made a consequential change to the state’s school system without considering the costs or arriving at a consensus, which is arguably the point of the legislative process, and now opponents are suing to undo it at taxpayers’ expense.
That’s no way to make law. A rejection by the court of the language in question will give the legislature an opportunity to do its job next session. In the long run, compromise regarding inter-district transportation is in the best interest of students and the school system.
Since 1994, Colorado students have been free to attend schools outside their district so long as they provide their own transportation. About 10 percent of students currently take advantage of the inter-district choice option.
A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison of inter-district choice in Colorado found that under the policy, poorer and lower performing districts tend to lose students while wealthier and higher performing districts gain them. The authors concluded that if inter-district transfers become more prevalent, it “will cause further segregation in terms of achievement levels and socioeconomic characteristics between districts. On the other hand, such transfers also allow families an easier route to a more desirable school system than residential location, which has been the traditional assignment mechanism.”
Inter-district transportation will likely increase inter-district transfers and thus amplify the benefits and costs identified by the researchers. Busing will enable poor students who cannot afford transportation to transfer to a better school, an opportunity that wealthier students already enjoy. The resulting interdistrict competition could also provide an incentive for district improvement. On the other hand, when motivated students leave and the district has to make cutbacks to staff and programming, remaining students will lose out. It’s also hard for districts to improve with less money and fewer motivated students.
Is there a way to maximize the benefits of inter-district busing while mitigating the costs? Certainly, that’s the point of work sessions, meetings with advocates and opponents, hearings, and amendments. The legislative process, when followed, helps legislators address concerns and forge a consensus. Shortcuts to this process tend to backfire. Case and point: The Affordable Care Act is being slowly dismantled because advocates did not take opponents’ concerns seriously or bother to forge bipartisan support.
School choice is no different. Public demand for education options is increasing as evidenced by the growing number of programs and participants in Colorado and around the country. Continued progress will be impeded if some students and families feel unfairly burdened by the policies or left out of the process. This could happen if the state adopts inter-district busing in the slipshod manner it did last
session.