State Education Department

School District Transportation Costs (Follow-Up Review)

School districts are generally required by law to provide transportation to and from school to all students residing within the district who do not live within a short distance of their school, regardless of whether that school is a public school within the district, a nonpublic school within the district, or a nonpublic school outside the district. Each district is responsible for making its own transportation arrangements, and the State Education Department is responsible for monitoring these arrangements.

In our prior audit report 2000-S-56, we examined the Department’s monitoring of school district transportation costs outside New York City. We found the Department did not analyze these costs for the purpose of identifying improvement opportunities, but could identify such opportunities if it performed analyses of this kind. We identified a number of districts with unusually high costs as well as practices that might help the districts reduce their costs. We also determined that more could be done to realize the potential cost-saving benefits of transportation studies funded by Department grants to individual school districts. In our follow-up review, we found that Department officials had made progress in implementing the recommendations contained in our initial report.

For a complete copy of Report 2003-F-40 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.