Indiana Supreme Court Will Look At Bus Fees For Parents
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The Indiana Supreme Court will decide whether school districts can charge transportation fees.
The Indiana Supreme Court plans to hear a case about whether a school district can charge parents a transportation fee to bus kids to and from school.
The case, Lora Hoagland v. Franklin Township Community School Corp., centers around Franklin Township’s $475 transportation fee. A Marion Superior judge sided with the district, but the Court of Appeals reversed that decision, sending it to the state Supreme Court.
As we reported in a story about textbook fees, Article 8, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution is vague when it comes to school fees:
“It should be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual scientific, and agricultural improvement; and provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all.”
Since tuition is not defined, it’s not clear whether bus fees, textbook fees and activity fees are legal under state law.
Regarding the case at hand, Franklin Township says the property tax caps that went into affect in 2010 shrank the district’s budget, preventing it from providing busing to its students. The Indiana Lawyer blog wrote about the circumstances of the case in June when the Court of Appeals reversed the Superior Judge’s decision:
Franklin Township Community School Corporation voted to eliminate student transportation for the 2011-2012 school year, and it later contracted with Central Indiana Educational Service Center to provide transportation services to and from school for a fee. The township decided to continue with the pay-to-ride plan even after Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller issued two official opinions on the matter.
Court of Appeals Chief Judge Nancy Vaidik wrote in her opinion Franklin Township’s decision to remove district-wide busing service and forcing parents to pay for a private busing service is unconstitutional:
If Indiana’s school corporations may not charge a fee for transporting students to and from school, may they stop transporting students to and from school? Franklin Township says yes; it argues that it may discontinue student transportation because the Education Code has only authorized—not mandated—student transportation. But that is not entirely accurate: Indiana’s school corporations must transport homeless students, foster-care students, special-needs students, and even private-school students who live on or near a school bus route. It is hard to image that the legislature meant to require our school corporations to transport these students but exclude all others.
The Court of Appeals transferred the case to the Supreme Court last week. There is no set date when an opinion will be issued.
