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South Carolina school districts desperately need new buses, but tapping the lottery to pay for them is not the answer.
Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler, a Republican candidate for governor, has called for using whatever proceeds the lottery earns during its first six months in operation to buy new school buses. He worries that if the state does not update its aging fleet of buses, hundreds of them will remain on the road well past the time they should have been retired.
The figures compiled by the state Department of Education back him up on the extent of the problem. More than 1,600 of the state’s school buses, or 29 percent of the entire fleet, need to be replaced because they are at least 15 years old or have more than 250,000 on the odometer.
The problem of aging buses hits close to home for local school districts. ON average, the 119 buses that serve the York school district and half of the Rock Hill school district are 10 years old and have logged more than 140,000 miles. The 16 oldest buses are 1985 models, and this year 12 buses in the fleet will top the 300,000-miles mark.
The same is true of the 103 buses the state employs to transport the other half of the Rock Hill student population and all Chester County students. Many of those buses are at least 15 years old and have exceeded 250,000 miles.
Peeler estimates that $67 million from the lottery would buy 1,409 new buses. He used the figure of $47,562 per bus, which is what North Carolina recently paid. South Carolina, however, requires specific safety features on its buses, which could increase the cost.
We agree that the state needs hundreds of new school buses. But we doubt that the lottery is the magic bullet to cure this problem.
When the state’s voters approved the lottery, the clear implication was that it would mirror the successful Georgia lottery. Georgia dedicates proceeds from its lottery to pay for college scholarships for all students who maintain a B-average and attend a college or university in the state. Significantly, lottery money is not used to pay for other educational needs traditionally funded by the state.
When South Carolina lawmakers passed legislation creating the lottery, they didn’t specify which educational programs would benefit from the proceeds. As a result, the lottery now is everyone’s favorite pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the lottery can’t possibly produce enough money to pay for all the needs various interests would like to tap it for.
Updating the geriatric school bus fleet should be a top priority, but that will require some political will on the part of lawmakers. The state has not funded a significant bus purchase since 1995. Education officials called for a major bus replacement program last year, and Gov. Jim Hodges proposed spending $40 million on new buses. But lawmakers balked, and did not set aside enough money.
Ideally, new buses should have been purchased on an ongoing basis so that buses could be gradually retired from the fleet as they got too old or exceeded recommended mileage. Now, however, the state is in a crisis with nearly a third of its buses over the hill.
The only solution is to bite the bullet and buy new buses. We hope lawmakers find a way to do that before students statewide find themselves stranded on the road in broken-down buses.
--Rock Hill Herald, October 31, 2001