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 now could also 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 under certain conditions, is now permissible under the law. See Piggyback Contract Guidance for further information.
The key is who is providing the services, a neighboring school district or a contractor? The first is shared services, the latter is piggybacking.
NOTE: A CONTRACT FORM TC must be filed with SED inorder to request aid for shared and piggyback services.