The subject came up during a recent budget hearing at which State School Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum said the Education Department needed $67 million more next year to keep its aging bus fleet on the road.

Even though the state bought more than 200 new buses last year for $14 million, that was only about half the number of buses that should be replaced each year, experts say. Some of the oldest buses had been on the road for 20 years and had more than 400,000 miles on the odometer. The department recommends that school buses be retired after 15 years or 250,000 miles.

As with private vehicles, beyond a point it costs more to operate buses that frequently break down than it would to buy new ones. What's worse is that when school buses are in the shop, it's more than an inconvenience. Children end up missing school or having to spend too many hours a day on the road because bus routes are doubled up.

So why wouldn't the state want to adopt a suggestion from a 1998 study that concluded South Carolina could save $250 million over 10 years by turning to private operators?

Frankly, moves to privatize public education leave us cold. We've heard too many horror stories about what happens when the profit motive runs into the mission of education. Those who spout off about how schools should be more businesslike tend to forget that, unlike businesses, teachers can neither reject the raw material they are supposed to turn into productive citizens nor switch suppliers when the problem seems to be parents who don't give a hoot about what their kids learn.

That said, our principal objection to privatizing the school bus system lies with the General Assembly. Although some would attribute current problems to a weak economy, the truth is that lawmakers provided no money to buy new school buses from 1996-98, when the economy was doing well. The average age of school buses rose from 6.7 years in 1995 to 11.5 years in 2002, according to The Greenville News. That's why buses are breaking down.

Granted, a private operator with a state contract in his pocket could borrow money and put a fleet of spanking new buses on the road, but why does the governor want to give private operators the wherewithal to succeed, which consistently has been denied state school employees?

We have no doubt that if the school bus system were privatized, the state would be obliged to fulfill its contract. We only wish there was such a commitment to our schools.

Problems with the state school bus fleet are a result of unfulfilled commitments by the General Assembly.