POLICYMAKERS MUST make trade-offs. Sometimes, they need to pick winners and losers. This past November, the school committee in Newton was looking for some extra dollars in its budget, and so it cut funding for transportation to private school students, nearly all of whom go to religious schools. In doing so, the public school budget will grow and religious families will see their costs go up. Budgetary choices are often zero-sum like this. One side wins, one side loses. My family is one that is losing an important service through this vote.
I hope not to be sore loser.
But I also hope to convey how this story in Newton is part of a much bigger battle being waged that touches upon the delicate balance between supporting public education and supporting families for whom religious education is a core priority.
Since the 1980s, Newton, like many other cities and towns in the Commonwealth, has provided public transportation to private school families. There’s actually a state law that requires private school students to have transportation to the same extent it is provided to public school students.
That law, which dates back to the 1930s, was written at a time when the Catholic church had more clout in the Commonwealth. But it reflects a principle that many lawmakers still value, which is that one can support parochial school students and their families through peripheral services that aid in their safety and well-being even while not directly funding their education. Bus transportation, like health services, special ed, and safe playground equipment are resources that need not be withheld from parochial school students especially if they are offered to all public school students, regardless of their income levels.
The buses that Newton will continue to provide to some 150 students through the end of this school year are not dedicated to just private schools. The buses run earlier routes to the private schools. My kids get on the bus at 6:55. By 7:45, after having dropped off my kids, their bus driver starts the public school route.
Accordingly, the marginal cost here is low, far lower than the millions of dollars Newton saves by not having to educate the students who are going to the parochial schools.
So why would Newton do this? Presumably, it’s not out of a desire to put an extra hundred cars on the road each morning and afternoon, leading to more congestion and pollution. Presumably, it’s not out of any animus to the families who attend Mt. Alvernia Academy and the Schechter school, the two religious schools where nearly all the affected students attend. And, presumably, it’s also not because Newton wants to waste taxpayer money fighting back a possible lawsuit because this policy change makes it impossible for private school students to get public transportation to school. (As outlined below, it is not totally clear whether this maneuver is consistent with the law.)
When I listened in on the school committee meetings and then personally spoke with the chair of the school committee, it was clear that the motivation was almost entirely budgetary. Religious school families are simply not a constituency that the school committee felt the need to prioritize, and this budget line item having been cut makes room for another to be added.
One might think that private school families are rich, and so they can handle the added cost. Why were they even getting public transportation in the first place? And why do so many other communities continue to offer this service?
If you are asking these questions, you might be imagining private schools to be tony prep schools for the wealthy. Many of the parents in parochial schools are middle-class people who drive minivans, need financial aid, and forego luxuries because they place such high value on the kind of education they can only get from religious institutions. The extra transportation cost will sting.
Parents have many reasons they choose religious schools over secular public schools. It could be to transmit religious and cultural values to their children. It could be because the public school system lost credibility during Covid, which led to many more families in places like Newton signing up for private education. It could be because parents worry about unwelcome ideological and political values being transmitted in public schools. For instance, the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s one-sided advocacy and instructional advice about the Israel-Hamas war was deeply concerning to many in the Jewish community. For these and other reasons, thousands of families in Massachusetts are willing to send much of their paychecks to religious schools, even in towns that have high-performing public schools.
The school committee here seems to view this vote as narrowly tailored to prioritizing public school students over other community needs. That view is surely consistent with how many voters across the Commonwealth would like school committees to act. But there is a competing view, which is that the state and local budgets for education should be more expansive, including supporting families who choose parochial schools.
For those who support the prioritization of public schools, there are nevertheless two reasons that taking away school buses from religious schools is a bad idea.
For one, the cost savings are so small that they might easily backfire. For instance, if some of the families currently in the parochial schools decide that their newly added transportation costs are too much to bear, and so they instead enroll in public schools, the savings to the city could vanish. Similarly, if the city must fight this in court, that, too, may cut substantially into savings.
The legality of Newton’s maneuver is in question because the law stipulates that private school students must be provided with transportation to the same extent it is offered to public school students, but it is unclear what that means. Officially, a public school student only receives busing if they live more than 2 miles from their zoned school. A private school student who lives less than 2 miles from their zoned public school but opts to go to a private school is thus plausibly not denied equal treatment. On the other hand, the law specifies that the relevant metric is the distance between the student’s home and the private school, not the distance between the home and public school. Hence the ambiguity. Even more problematic is that Newton offers highly subsidized busing to public school students who do not meet the distance requirements, and this benefit is not offered to parochial school students in the new policy. Thus, busing does not seem to be offered to private school students to the same extent as public school students.
A separate reason why those singularly committed to public schools should proceed cautiously is that most taxpayers do not make direct use of the public schools, and so school committees must demonstrate that the school system is of broad value to the community. They may do so through services like adult education opportunities in after-school hours or sharing bus routes with private schools. School committees that alienate themselves from constituencies who benefit from those auxiliary services do so at some risk. Maybe the next time voters are asked to raise taxes for schools, the majority of voters are no longer there.
Meanwhile, what should religious school families and their allies do in light of this decision by the Newton school committee? For one, they should get organized, and not just in Newton. Newton is departing from a decades-long precedent that is still policy in many communities. But if school boards in those communities see that Newton can do this (and courts agree), many more cities and towns might suddenly find an opportunity for a budget cut. Those who prioritize religious education – or at the very least, those who don’t think that a service like buses should be withheld from religious families – should elect school committee members, city councilors, and mayors who share their values.
But there’s a bigger move here. If a community like Newton, with all of its wealth and resources, will still throw religious families under the bus, so to speak, religious families and their allies should get organized for statewide action. They should organize so that parents who choose religious schools, home schooling, and other non-public options can benefit from more educational services than they now receive.
Of course, many in Massachusetts – including many who opt for private schools for their own families – are strongly committed to the public schools and would not want to see public schools undermined. They might consider, then, how maneuvers like this recent policy change by the Newton school committee frays community ties.
Eitan Hersh is a professor of political science at Tufts University.
The post Ending transportation for private school students is wrong move appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.