In recent years, getting kids to school has evolved from a predictable administrative duty into a fiscal burden capable of triggering structural deficits, service cuts, and Proposition 2½ override battles.
Locally, the Silver Lake Regional School District and Superintendency Union 31 are currently insulated from the absolute worst of the crisis by a competitively bid contract with First Student signed in 2020. Last month, the school committees exercised a Year 7 option with a highly favorable 4.51% increase. But as Plympton School Committee Chair Jason Fraser warned, “We’re going to be in a very interesting position when this contract runs out”. Fraser has bluntly characterized the current school bus market as a “monopoly”.
He isn’t wrong. A February report from the Office of the Inspector General revealed that 67 percent of Massachusetts districts received only one or zero bids in their most recent general education procurement cycle.
When our local contract expires, we will be thrown into a predatory market. Even now, out-of-district special education transportation costs are surging 10 to 21 percent year over year. In Plympton, an $84,000 surge in out-of-district vocational tuition and transportation for just two students essentially wiped out a $93,000 increase in net state education aid.
How did the basic function of getting kids to school become a financial vulnerability? And more importantly, what can our local and state decision-makers do about it?
To solve the problem, we must understand the structural forces driving up the costs:
1. A Disappearance of Vendor Competition: The days of shopping around for competitive bids are largely over. The school transportation market has seen massive consolidation, increasingly dominated by a handful of private-equity-backed national firms. Today, just four companies control over 50 percent of the national market. Without competition, districts lose all bargaining power and are forced to accept massive annual price hikes.
2. The Uniquely High Cost of Special Education Transport: Transporting students to specialized out-of-district (OOD) programs is the primary escalator of student transit costs. Statewide, it costs an average of $13,825 to transport a special education student, compared to just $1,045 for a general education student—a 13:1 ratio. This is exacerbated by Massachusetts’ stringent regulations on “7D” vehicles (typically passenger vans). The state mandates these vans be equipped with features like alternating flashing lights, backup alarms, and child reminder systems. These state-specific modifications add $30,000 to $40,000 in upfront capital expenses per vehicle. Furthermore, they must carry “Pupil” license plates, which legally prevents drivers from using the vans for rideshare services like Uber or Lyft during their downtime, restricting the labor pool.
3. A Severe Labor Shortage: The industry relies on part-time, split-shift workers. However, the booming logistics and delivery sectors (Amazon, UPS) have lured away drivers with flexible, year-round work that doesn’t require managing children. To drive a yellow bus, applicants must obtain a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), requiring 60 hours of training and passing a daunting “under the hood” engine components test—a requirement critics argue is absurd since modern drivers are strictly forbidden from performing mechanical repairs.
4. A Reactive and Broken State Funding Model: Massachusetts is a national outlier. It is one of only six states that relies on a reimbursement model for transportation, and one of only three that provides zero transportation aid to districts during the year the expenses are incurred. Under the Special Education “Circuit Breaker,” districts must front the entire cost of expensive OOD transport and wait until the following fiscal year for partial reimbursement. Worse, the state habitually underfunds its promises. While state law (M.G.L. c. 71, § 16C) legally obligates the Commonwealth to reimburse 100 percent of regional school transportation, the state has not honored this commitment in over 15 years, hovering around 87 percent in FY2025. Furthermore, non-regional municipal districts—like the elementary schools in Kingston, Halifax, and Plympton—receive zero state reimbursement for regular day transportation, leaving local taxpayers to foot the entire bill.
With contractor prices soaring, some districts try to take back control. Brockton Public Schools made headlines in 2021 by purchasing 64 buses for $5.4 million to build an in-house fleet, estimating it would save millions. It was a disaster. A 2024 internal audit revealed a dysfunctional department with a “stunning lack of mechanics”—just three mechanics for 140 vehicles. The district faced rampant driver absenteeism, had no spare vehicles, and had to rapidly hire private vendors at premium rates to cover dropped routes. Brockton is now considering relinquishing control of the buses and returning to outsourcing.
To survive this crisis, action must be taken immediately. Here is a guide for our local School Committees and our state legislators on Beacon Hill.
For Local School Committees:
Aggressively Pursue the Regionalization Study: In January, the UMass Boston Collins Center launched an 18-month study to examine folding our three elementary schools into the Silver Lake Regional district. If the elementary schools join the regional district, their current transportation costs become eligible for the state’s regional reimbursement program. This single administrative change could save local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and relieve pressure on the town budgets.
Coordinate OOD Special Education Routes: Do not send a half-empty 7D van to a specialized school if a neighboring town is doing the same. Expand partnerships with educational collaboratives to co-route students across district lines. Sharing a van can reduce the base cost of a run by tens of thousands of dollars.
Demand Itemized Invoicing in the Next Bid: When the First Student contract finally expires, do not accept flat “daily rates” per bus. Require bidders to provide unbundled, itemized cost data detailing labor, fuel, maintenance, and profit margins. You cannot negotiate effectively if you don’t know what is driving a vendor’s 15 percent rate hike.
For State Legislators:
Pass Pending Relief Legislation: Rep. LaNatra has already co-sponsored H.513, which would create an “Extraordinary Routes Relief Fund” to help districts with severe bus, fuel, and driver costs. Rep. Badger has filed House Bill 4066 to combat predatory pricing by vendors. These bills must be prioritized in the current session.
Transition to Same-Year Funding: The state must abandon the archaic reimbursement-only model. Transitioning the Special Education Circuit Breaker and transportation aid to a proactive, same-year funding system will immediately relieve cash-flow strains on municipal budgets.
Create a Centralized Contract Database: The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) should host a public repository of all school transportation bids and contracts. Currently, districts negotiate in the dark. Allowing our business officials to instantly compare contract terms and daily rates with neighboring towns will eliminate the asymmetric information advantage held by national bus companies.
Review “7D” Vehicle Mandates: The state must evaluate whether the strict customization rules for special education vans provide measurable safety benefits over standard federal regulations. Relaxing these rules could lower capital costs for vendors and allow drivers to use the vehicles for ridesharing during off-hours, attracting more workers to the profession.
Fully Fund the Promises Already Made: The Legislature must honor its statutory commitment to reimburse 100 percent of regional school transportation (passing H.697/S.328).
The era of cheap, reliable school busing is over. If we want to keep Silver Lake’s education dollars inside the classroom, officials must stop treating transportation as an administrative afterthought and start managing it as the systemic financial crisis it has become.

Across Massachusetts, a municipal financial crisis is quietly boiling over, and the Silver Lake region finds itself squarely in the path of the storm. The Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) has characterized the current convergence of economic forces as a “Perfect Storm”—a structural decoupling of 20th-century revenue caps and the 21st-century cost of running a municipality.
For residents of the Silver Lake region, the math is becoming visibly strained. From debates over cutting teachers to looming multimillion-dollar roof replacements, the “Perfect Storm” is making landfall in our backyards. Here is a look at the mechanics of this crisis and the solutions local and state officials are trying to deploy.
The crisis statewide is defined by a structural collision: legally constrained revenues colliding with uncontrollable expenditure growth.
The core constraint on local revenues is Proposition 2½, the 1980 statute capping property tax levy increases at 2.5% annually. While that growth factor provided stability during periods of low inflation, it is not indexed to actual inflation. In the post-pandemic era, the cost of municipal needs—asphalt, energy, contracted labor—has skyrocketed, creating an immediate structural deficit when costs rise by 4% to 6% but revenues can only legally grow by 2.5%.
Historically, the state partnered with municipalities through Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA), heavily tied to State Lottery profits. Adjusted for inflation, however, UGGA funding in Fiscal Year 2026 is approximately 25% lower than it was in 2002—a long-term divestment that has forced towns to rely ever more heavily on overburdened local property taxpayers.
Meanwhile, towns are being squeezed by mandated, uncontrollable costs on multiple fronts. Municipal health insurance has risen over 60% since 2001, driven by specialty drugs and provider consolidation. Local retirement boards are hiking assessments by 6% to 8% annually to meet a state-mandated 2040 full-funding deadline—Plymouth County is still targeting 2031. State-set tuition rates for private out-of-district special education saw a historic 14% increase in FY24, decimating local school budgets. From 2021 to 2024, federal pandemic relief (ARPA) masked these structural deficits, but those funds must be fully expended by December 2026, creating a fiscal cliff as that money disappears.
Silver Lake Feels It
In Kingston, Halifax, and Plympton, the consequences are tangible, particularly in the shared Silver Lake Regional School District. To hold its FY27 budget increase to 2.5%, district administration identified $586,000 in reductions, including cutting five teachers, two administrators, and two paraprofessionals. If enacted, high school students may face larger class sizes and fewer elective or Advanced Placement offerings.
The district is also sitting on a $50 million backlog in critical building repairs over the next decade, including the high school’s wastewater treatment plant, failing HVAC systems, and central office facilities. The district can no longer rely on its Excess and Deficiency (E&D) reserves to patch these issues—those funds have been severely depleted.
The state-local mismatch is on sharp display in Plympton. The town recently received $93,000 in additional net state aid—an amount immediately consumed by an $84,000 surge in out-of-district vocational tuition and specialized transportation for just two students. The school committee adopted a “net zero” budget strategy, moving routine operational expenses—including a $12,500 phone system overhaul—out of the general budget and into a separate Town Meeting warrant. Compounding the pressure is the Dennett Elementary School’s aging roof, a project expected to balloon from $1.3 million to $3 million by the time it reaches Town Meeting in 2028 or 2029.
Halifax is entering what then Interim Town Administrator Bob Fennessy called a “very fiscally conservative year,” with department heads under strict instructions to reduce expenses. Anticipating rough waters ahead, the town has formed an Override Study Committee to evaluate whether to ask voters for a tax increase.
What Officials Are Trying
A Local Fix: The Debt-to-Capital Shift
To tackle the Silver Lake district’s $50 million infrastructure deficit without spiking taxes, officials are proposing a novel accounting approach. As old construction bonds on the middle and high schools are paid off, the towns’ debt assessments will drop. Rather than returning that savings to taxpayers, the district is considering keeping the assessment flat and redirecting the freed-up money—starting at $700,000 and growing to $1.3 million annually—into a dedicated Silver Lake Stabilization Fund. The Kingston Select Board and Finance Committee have already voted unanimously to support the strategy as a way to avoid a massive future debt exclusion override.
Fighting the Transportation Crunch
Plympton School Committee Chair Jason Fraser has highlighted what he described as a “monopoly” of school busing contractors, arguing that small towns face limited competitive bidding and outsized pricing power. To limit the damage, Silver Lake is exercising a “Year 7” option on its current contract to cap increases at 5%, avoiding the double-digit hikes seen in neighboring districts. Officials are also supporting state legislation—House Bill 4066—aimed at addressing pricing in school transportation.
“351 for 351”: The State-Level Push
On Beacon Hill, the MMA is lobbying the state to share what it describes as an “inflationary windfall” from income and sales taxes. The association is pushing a “351 for 351” plan—a $351 million increase in UGGA funding, representing an average increase of $1 million per municipality. The goal is to restore the purchasing power towns have lost to inflation over the past two decades. This is not in the Governor’s Budget proposal.
The Municipal Empowerment Act
Governor Maura Healey has proposed a package of local options to help municipalities diversify their revenue streams. The Act would allow towns to raise the local meals tax cap from 0.75% to 1%, increase the lodging tax, and add a 5% surcharge on motor vehicle excise taxes. While these tools help tourist-heavy communities, the MMA and local officials have noted they generate modest returns for suburbs and rural communities like Halifax or Plympton, doing little to address the structural limits of the property tax cap.
The Reckoning Ahead
For Kingston, Halifax, and Plympton residents, the upcoming spring Town Meetings will be pivotal. Without systemic reform from the State House, Silver Lake communities will be repeatedly forced to choose among three unpleasant options: eroding municipal services, deferred infrastructure maintenance, or asking property taxpayers to pay more. The “Perfect Storm” is not on the horizon—it has arrived.

The Plympton School Committee convened on Feb. 9, 2026, for a wide-ranging session that included a favorable FY27 budget update, a discussion of mounting infrastructure challenges at Dennett Elementary School, and a vote to raise the administrative assistant’s hourly wage. A net increase of $93,000 in state education aid, released in the governor’s House 2 budget, arrived just in time to absorb an unexpected $84,000 cost tied to two new vocational school applicants.
The centerpiece of the evening was a budget update delivered by Chair Jason Fraser and Finance Director Sarah Hickey. Two Plympton students have applied to Norfolk Agricultural High School for the upcoming school year — one more than the single student that had been budgeted. The combined cost of tuition and transportation for those two students totals $84,000: $70,000 in tuition and $14,000 in transportation.
In the same week that cost became known, the governor released her House 2 budget, which showed Plympton netting $93,000 more in state education aid compared to last year. “I was excited that we had the $93,000 come in,” Fraser said, “and the next morning Sarah was like, ‘we have $84,000 more of vocational students.'” He noted the Finance Committee and Town Administrator have been informed and are comfortable with the committee proceeding on that basis.
“One hand giveth. One hand taketh. I’m happy being at net zero” Fraser added.
A complicating factor in the vocational budget line is the state’s new blind lottery process for Chapter 74 vocational program seats. Students who apply are no longer guaranteed admission even if qualified, meaning the committee may be budgeting for students who ultimately do not attend. Fraser noted the district will know by April 1 which students have applied, and if any are not admitted, the excess funds would be returned to the town at year-end. Final budget adoption is planned for the March 9 meeting.
Hickey presented the committee with a recommendation to exercise the seventh-year option year in the existing First Student transportation contract, which is shared across Silver Lake Regional School District and Superintendency Union 31. The option year comes in at less than a 5% increase over FY26 — a figure the committee viewed as a significant relief given broader market conditions.
“This is an absolute financial no-brainer with double-digit increases and many transportation costs,” Fraser said. “We’re going to be in a very interesting position when this contract runs out.” The vote on exercising the option will be taken by the Silver Lake School Committee and the Joint Committee; no Plympton vote was required that evening.
The discussion broadened into a candid conversation about the state of public school transportation procurement. Committee members noted that competitive bidding rarely produces more than one vendor in a given area. Wilhelmsen observed that the district had effectively no meaningful competitive alternative and that a 15–20% cost increase would be the likely result of going out to bid.
Fraser pointed to House Bill 4066, filed by State Rep. Michelle Badger — a former Plymouth school committee member — as one legislative attempt to address what he characterized as “predatory pricing” of school transportation. He said the Massachusetts Association of School Committees has long called for full reimbursement of regional transportation costs, which the governor’s budget is close to achieving, and has also advocated for either a circuit-breaker mechanism or direct regulation of transportation vendors. Hickey noted that the procurement is governed by M.G.L. Chapter 30B and that districts have no legal mechanism to control how many vendors respond to a bid.
The Capital Improvement Planning subcommittee, led by Wilhelmsen, reported on a meeting held the prior week and outlined a series of pressing facility needs at Dennett Elementary. The discussion painted a picture of a building with aging infrastructure across multiple critical systems — and limited funds to address them.
The subcommittee is focused on a building conditions assessment, initially estimated at $70,000. Wilhelmsen said the committee pushed back on that figure, arguing that a prior roof assessment has already documented the roof’s condition and does not need to be re-studied. He suggested a more targeted scope could bring the cost to $30,000–$35,000. As a reference point, Silver Lake recently completed a comparable assessment covering four buildings for approximately $67,000. The committee agreed to pursue a formal cost estimate before going out to bid, since any assessment project exceeding $10,000 requires a public procurement process.
Among the facility issues reviewed: the building’s roof is described as failing and in need of ongoing emergency repair funds — a $15,000 placeholder was discussed to keep the roof “limping through” additional school years until a full replacement can be financed. HVAC is a major concern, with six rooftop units in need of full replacement; one newer unit is already five years old, and estimates for individual replacements have ranged from $80,000 to $110,000 per unit. The gym floor requires a comprehensive resurfacing, with a rough estimate of $30,000 raised but not confirmed. A well cleaning and spare pump were estimated at $20,000. PFAS treatment equipment requirements from the state Department of Environmental Protection are also on the committee’s radar, though Wilhelmsen said he does not intend to plan for an expansion of the well room until DEP makes requirements clear.
The committee agreed that a building conditions assessment — and a roof repair placeholder — should be positioned as warrant articles or budget placeholders, with specific figures to be confirmed as the town meeting season approaches. Wilhelmsen said he expects major infrastructure work will require borrowing. Fraser added that having an active capital improvement program and engineering reports in hand strengthens any future application to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, potentially increasing the reimbursement percentage the district could receive.
Fraser provided a legislative update, noting that rural aid was increased to $20 million in Governor Healy’s House 2 budget — a substantial increase from last year. He cautioned, however, that the governor’s budget is expected to face significant resistance in the House, which he said may “not even pay attention to what she had and rewrite it themselves.” He warned that rural communities in particular could see funding cut back. He advised the committee to treat the governor’s budget as a floor, but with less confidence than in prior years.
Chapter 70 funding for Plympton has grown substantially in recent years, from approximately $570,000 to $1.2 million — a near-doubling, Fraser said, achieved in part through advocacy by the district’s state legislative delegation. Taking into account Chapter 70 aid, grants, and circuit breaker reimbursements, Fraser estimated that state funding covers roughly one-third of the district’s total budget. Wilhelmsen suggested that point be made clearly in budget presentations, as many residents may not realize the degree to which state dollars offset local property taxes.
The committee also noted that a joint meeting with the Silver Lake Regional School Committee is scheduled for Feb. 27 at 5 p.m., to be held in person.