Maintaining an entirely separate mass transit system for the educational system is a relatively large chunk of property taxes, costing an average of ~$500/student.
The major alternative would be using a public mass transit system which just happens to hit the school as part of its routes. Which is culturally and ideologically unacceptable for most of the US.
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Maintaining an entirely separate mass transit system for the educational system is a relatively large chunk of property taxes, costing an average of ~$500/student.
$2.50 per school day?
Sounds like a deal.
I've looked over my town's numbers: the big payments are teacher salaries. I'm happy to pay them and have great teachers. YMMV.
The major alternative would be using a public mass transit system which just happens to hit the school as part of its routes. Which is culturally and ideologically unacceptable for most of the US.
There's some logistical problems to absorbing school busing into public transit. https://humantransit.org/2017/08/the-problem-of-school-trans...
In most suburban and rural parts of the US, there is no existing mass transit system.
What separate mass transit system are you talking about? In most places with school buses there is no mass transit of any sort.