Kentucky Spending Millions on Student Busing at Private, Religious Schools
Over the last six years, as the state of Kentucky shrank public education funding, it spent nearly $18 million to pay for student busing at private, mostly religious schools in two dozen counties, according to state financial records.
In Nelson County, for example, the state last year paid $182,943 for 257 students to be bused to Catholic schools. Nelson County Fiscal Court matched that with $49,388 from its own budget. That money was split between the city and county school districts, to compensate them for carrying private students on their buses, and private Bethlehem High School in Bardstown, which runs five buses on several daily routes.
“It really is pretty critical for us,” said Tom Hamilton, principal of Bethlehem High School, part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville. “Bus transportation is a high-ticket item. This doesn’t pay for all of our costs, but it pays for a lot of it.”
The state’s spending is about to grow. In March, amid lobbying by the Catholic Conference of Kentucky and other groups, the General Assembly voted to boost the private school bus subsidy to $3.5 million annually, up from $2.9 million, a 17 percent increase.
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