Last night, Roanoke, VA’s school board voted to privatize its transportation services:
In a 4-3 vote, board members decided to sell the school system’s fleet of roughly 150 buses to Krapf Transportation Services, a Pennsylvania-based company. […] School officials said an outsourced transportation system would save the district roughly $250,000 a year. The contract also calls for Krapf to buy 15 new buses every year to replace aging buses. Right now, the average Roanoke school bus is 13.7 years old. […]
Board member Jason Bingham said a private transportation system would make it possible for school officials to focus more on instruction without the distractions of running a bus system.
As Mr. Bingham suggests, privatization is a powerful tool to help “right-size” government and keep it focused on its core competencies.