Georgia set to roll out more money to help school districts pay to bus students to school

Every weekday morning and afternoon, a fleet of yellow buses rolls out all over the state, picking up and dropping off Georgia students.

Keeping all those wheels turning isn’t cheap – Georgia’s school districts combined spend more than $1.2 billion to safely shuttle kids between school and home – and costs are only getting higher as more students enroll and the costs of buses, fuel and labor rise.

For more than two decades, local districts have been stuck footing those bills. According to the Georgia Budget Policy Institute, the amount of money the state pitches in for transportation has been basically stagnant since the early 2000s. Those state dollars used to fund over half of the districts’ transportation costs, but now only cover about 17%.