No matter how much the state pays – or doesn't pay – for transportation, school districts still have to get kids to school and get them home.

If the General Assembly eventually approves Gov. Pat Quinn's budget proposal to cut $95 million from transportation funding, busing will become another unfunded, or under-funded, mandate.

"It means the local funding is going to have to pick it up," said Carol Baker, business director for the Urbana school district.

Districts are required to provide bus service to students who live more than 1 1/2 miles from school. But how Urbana does that might have to be re-examined, depending on how much the state ultimately decides to provide in transportation funding.

The district could look at changing busing patterns in order to save money, Baker said.

"You can always make things more inconvenient," she said, noting that using one bus to run several different routes would be more efficient.

"But that means kids are riding longer. You have to stagger the start times of schools," Baker said. "Our board has not chosen to do that. That's a real inconvenience to parents. You have kindergartners waiting for the bus at 6:30 or 7 in the morning when it's dark, and that's not safe."

The district looked at such a change years ago, Baker said, and decided the savings weren't enough to justify the inconvenience. But more state cuts might force the Urbana district and others to consider it again, she said.

Gary Lewis, superintendent of Catlin schools, said Quinn's proposal is at cross purposes.

"He proposes consolidation, but you will have to have more transportation when schools consolidate," Lewis said. "We finally received the final payment for last year's transportation and we haven't receive any transportation so far for this year."

The Rossville school board has recently been discussing reactivating its high school and gone so far as to hire a consultant to look into the feasibility of bring district students back to its building rather than attend Hoopeston Area or Bismarck-Henning high schools.

"A push for consolidation or not, the question about reactivation will be on the ballot," said Darren Duncan, Rossville school board president. "Actually, like the governor, we've agreed that we need to chart a course for the future. Between paying to tuition for our students to other districts and the cost of busing them there and apparently getting less money to do that mandated busing is difficult."

Heritage Superintendent Allen Hall said that until he knows if Quinn wants dual districts or just a certain number of students in each district, he cannot say how the consolidation proposal would affect Heritage.

But as for transportation cuts, "We have not bought a new school bus for 3 years. ... All schools will be driving old buses if this passes.

"School consolidation means more busing and less local control," he said. "Quinn had better not cut transportation funding if he wants consolidation."

Quinn's proposed cut to transportation funding would mean the Urbana budget would be half what it was two years ago.

It could also affect field trips. Districts get reimbursement for transportation costs of field trips, Baker said. They don't get reimbursement for transportation to athletic events.

The Urbana school district is starting to look at redistricting its elementary school boundaries, and one of the guiding factors will be minimizing the amount of busing needed.

The district is owed $665,000 this year in transportation reimbursements. Half of that has been approved to be paid, but the only money the district has seen so far is the payments it should have received during the 2009-2010 school year, Baker said. It finally received all that money in December.

Rantoul City Schools lead Administrator Jennifer Ernst said school transportation costs are "big line items in the budget," easy for state officials to spot.

"They need to work harder at where really good feasible cuts are possible," Ernst said.

If these budget cuts "were going to work, it would have been done 10 years ago," she said.

Quinn's budget proposal included a 3.2 percent increase in overall state funding for elementary and secondary education.

"We're not counting on that," Baker said. "For our budget projections I'm doing now, our best case scenario is level funding. If we get an increase, that will be a blessing."

She doesn't believe the General Assembly will approve what Quinn has proposed, and she is conservative in her budget projections. School districts must also notify staff of any layoffs by the end of March.

"Unfortunately it's going to be May or June until we know for sure" about state funding, Baker said. "We will use a much gloomier picture to project.

"The bottom line is, we have to make decisions before they are going to be done arguing about it in Springfield."

News-Gazette staff writer Pat Phillips, Andrew Richards of the Rantoul Press and Nora Maberry of the Leader contributed to this report.