Pupil Transportation

Shared Services

Shared services contracts are permitted under the law.  A shared service may exist when a neighboring school district has the need to send pupils to the same nonpublic school as another school district.  Thus school district B may contract with school district A to pay for their pupils to ride the bus that school district A owns and operates to transport their pupils to the same nonpublic school.  Shared services may only exist when one of the school districts is actually providing the services.

A shared services agreement does not exist when school district B requests school district A to add a bus/child/route to an existing contract that school district A has with a pupil transportation services contractor.   That would be considered “piggybacking”, which is not permissible under the law.   School district B did not bid the services and has no legal authority to accept services from the contractor.   They may not enter into a contract with school district A to permit their pupils to ride the contractor bus and make payment to school district A to cover the expense.

The key is who is providing the services, a neighboring school district or a contractor?  The first is shared services, the latter is piggybacking.