While extra lottery revenues in South Carolina is good news for public schools, media reports suggesting that the $26 million might be funneled toward brand-new school buses are premature, said Department of Education spokesperson Jay Ragley.
He noted that it is ultimately the governor’s budget that determines how any education dollars get spent.
The House has approved the proposed executive budget, which earmarks $10 million to purchase new yellow buses, but the Senate is still considering it. Ragley said the deadline for an approved state budget is July 1.
Education Superintendent Mick Zais said earlier this week that he hopes senators will spend the full $26 million on new school buses. The state of South Carolina owns and operates a yellow bus fleet that is widely acknowledged as the oldest in the nation, even by the DOE, which continues to own and operate the fleet of some 5,600 buses. Approximately two-thirds are 15 years old or more, which means some children are riding the same buses that once ferried their parents.
In January, Zais learned about the surplus lottery revenue and recommended putting it toward the $46 million the DOE had requested of Gov. Nikki Haley last fall.
“Based on revenue estimates, he knew there was going to be excess lottery money, so he said we should reroute that for school buses. There is some debate right now about how much money there is, or isn’t,” Ragley told STN. “If they were to allocate all the lottery funds to new buses, it would be a much-needed boost, but so far it’s not definite.”
Since a new school bus costs $90,000 on average, $26 million would cover about 288 new buses. State law recommends a 15-year bus replacement cycle yet does not require it, and the General Assembly has never acted to fund this program, Ragley added. He said it would take $34 million to replace one-fifteenth of the fleet, or 380 buses.
Ragley pointed out the $10.5 million currently budgeted for new school buses next year is not only less than last year’s $12 million allocation but also the lowest amount budgeted for buses in the past three years.
“We’ll see what the Senate does. They can change the budget, and it can go back and forth. We just don’t know how much money will be for buses,” he added.
When the DOE requested $46 million for buses last fall, Ragley explained the plan was to pull from several different sources. For instance, when the state took delivery of 342 new school buses in December, he said they had to combine two different fiscal years’ worth of funding with some agency revenue garnered from the sale of scrap metal from old buses.
By law, state lottery funds are allowed to fund college scholarships, county libraries and supplemental education programs in the areas of reading, math, science and social studies.
