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The School Transportation Allotment Handbook for school year 2010-2011 contains significant changes that need to be reviewed carefully to ensure eligibility for Foundation School Program state aid funding.  Local systems for tracking eligible ridership and administrative procedure manuals will require significant adjustments, in many school districts, to ensure accurate and complete counts in school transportation reports to the Texas Education Agency.  The significant changes are summarized in the Handbook as follows:

• "All intra-district (within district) home-to-school or school-to-home transportation becomes eligible provided students meet eligibility requirements. This means that home-to-school or school-to-home transportation of students to magnet schools/campuses and transportation home to students that stay after school for tutorials or other after school programs, which was previously ineligible, will become eligible. Transportation provided to inter-district voluntary transfer students remains ineligible.
• All transportation during the school day provided to students from their assigned campus of regular attendance (hereinafter, home campus) to another campus/instructional site to attend required academic instruction for a course the student is enrolled in, that is not available at the student’s home campus, will become eligible. The transportation provided does not include extra/cocurricular school activity trips and other non-instructional purposes such as field trips, athletics practice, sporting events, school club meetings, band/cheer competitions, animal shows or competitions, or between-campus transportation for meals.
• Route descriptions begin and end at the location the school bus or passenger car is parked and should represent the actual daily mileage required to transport eligible students.
• Missed instructional days that occurred between the first and last day of student attendance due to bad weather, health or safety, and received TEA Waiver Unit approval; and staff development training days that were approved, during which training was conducted, and no school classes were held all become eligible days for funding of home-to-school/school-to-home routes. Missed instructional days must have occurred during the time the route was in operation.
• An official count day may be any school day during a month instead of the previously designated first Wednesday of the month.
• Counts of eligible riders are only required for regular program home-to-school or school-to-home routes. Counts on these routes are required during at least two months during the school year. Eligible rider rosters are still required for all routes.
• The number of regular program subprograms has been reduced and the subprograms for both regular and special have been renamed."

To access the School Transportation Allotment Handbook for school year 2010-2011 click on the link below.

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147484107&menu_id=645