Students Must Pay To Ride Buses, School Board Decides

The Indianapolis Star has been following the story:

Franklin Township will no longer bus students to school. Instead, families will need to pay $55 per student per month to a non-profit to provide transportation. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Franklin Township Schools students will be able to ride the bus to class, but their families will have to pay out of their own pockets for the service. After voters turned down a property tax increase for the district, officials had planned to stop transportation of students, because of a projected $8 million budget shortfall that the extra taxes would have covered. Instead, the district is going to arrange for a nonprofit organization to take over the busing of students.

Franklin Township families will have to pay $55 per month per student to ride the new bus service.

The district will still close two elementary schools and an elementary school to help close the budget gap, and will still need to layoff as many as 81 teachers.

School board members had said they would rather cut transportation altogether than face even deeper cuts to classroom staff.