Local school districts in North Carolina will have less state funding for school buses this year. The General Assembly cut $4.6 million from the budget for school transportation.
The cut comes one year after the Legislature upped the number of miles a school bus could stay on the roads.
"We do have a bit of an older fleet out there, not dramatically, but it is an older fleet now," says Derek Graham, the director of transportation services at the Department of Public Instruction.
"And we do have buses that have to be repaired at local expense rather than being repaired under warranty because that mileage threshold changed."
Graham says that change last year and this year’s budget cut put extra pressure on local school districts to use funds that could have gone to the classroom.
The $4.6 million dollar cut represents about one percent of the statewide allocation toward school transportation.