I think that it is possible for many school districts to scale back on buses anyway. When I was a kid, I used to walk to school. The lucky kids who had bikes used to ride to school. The weenies got rides from their parents and had their parents drop them off two blocks away from school so nobody would see them getting a ride.

Today, buses run to my old neighborhood and pick kids up to bring them to/from the exact same school I used to walk to. Mind you, the kids that ride the bus are the unfortunate ones because most of the kids get dropped off at the school front door by their parents.

Recently, I am seeing more bikes at schools and it seems more kids are walking. It looks like some parents are finally saying "hey, kid, I walked it - so can you". Hopefully, people are starting to cool off from the fear-years where the media had us all convinced that every street corner had a pedophile waiting to snatch un-escorted children and young teens on their way to school.

For students in rural areas that have to travel far distances to go to school, buses are still the most practical approach. Asking parents to bring kids to school in a lot of rural places might mean that some kids will be missing lot of school - and that isn't good for the school budgets either.