In Andover, Kan., just outside Wichita, families are forking over $100 per student this year for the privilege of riding the bus, the best solution a panel of community leaders could think of to cover holes in the school budget.
In Gainesville, Fla., no student within two miles of school is getting bus service for the second year in a row.
"We had our knock-down, drag-out last year," said Harrell Harrison, director of transportation in the Alachua County School District. "These are hard economic times. We've got to drive fewer miles, and to do it means cutting routes."
The fight now is underway in Memphis, where the schools superintendent Kriner Cash cut 40 percent of the routes this summer, increased distances between bus stops and curbed bus access to older students who live within two miles of school.
The cuts are expected to save Memphis City Schools $6.5 million a year.
Across the nation, school bus routes are disappearing faster than cake in the lunch line largely because the law requires only special education students be transported.
Of the approximately 50 million students in the nation, roughly 26 million ride school buses. Last year saw a decrease of about 5 percent -- the most in more than a decade -- to 25 million as the recession bore down and districts began cutting services.
"We find, unfortunately, that school transportation is put on the chopping block quickly," said Michael Martin, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation. "In reality, it should be one of the last because school buses are by far the safest and most eco-sensitive way kids can get to school."
A 2002 study by the Transportation Research Board shows only 2 percent of the roughly 800 student fatalities that occur nationwide during school hours each year are related to school-bus accidents.
"We have to think twice before we make choices that are going to put kids at risk," said Robin Leeds at the National School Transportation Association.
"If a child does not have access to a school bus and is not fortunate enough to have two parents with cars, they are at the mercy of walking dangerous routes or missing school."
California has been the hardest hit after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut 20 percent of school transportation funding this summer. Many districts in the state are instituting higher ride fees.
School leaders there actually feel lucky, because the governor had threatened to slash 65 percent.
"The only thing that saved us was the federal stimulus dollars," said Tim Hern, assistant superintendent of business services for schools in Oakdale, Calif., where students living up to two miles from school are now walking.
Leeds understands the bind school administrators are in.
"They are trying to keep cuts out of the classroom, so transportation seems like a good place.
"But there are a certain number of students who can't get to school if they don't have the bus. Administrators trying to preserve classroom funding by cutting buses will see that it's no help to kids who can no longer get to the classroom."
Despite the gloom, districts are finding creative ways to get around the problem, including busing from central pick-up points and engaging volunteer crossing guards to stand watch.
"It's cheaper to provide students with ... subway tokens than to provide buses," said John Musso, head of the Association of School Business Officials International in Reston, Va.
"Depending on what the new normal turns out to be, we may determine that walking to school is not such a bad thing, and that the money can be better spent improving math and English instruction and those sorts of things."
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