in software engineering we often say: outsource anything that’s not your core value proposition
basically, don’t take valuable time and effort from the thing you do well and want to focus on to do something that you don’t really care about, that someone else is spending time and effort focusing on doing well. in this situation, managing a load of busses isn’t something the schools should be focusing on: they should focus on education, and getting kids there and home should be the job of someone else specialised in doing that task
sure, but that’s a small part of actual work that’s involved in owning and maintaining a fleet of busses, paying drivers who work only a few hours per day, organising scheduling and routes, etc
That somebody requires profit to do it, school can do this at cost…
Again, theory is decent in practice this is how corruption gets done. It is cute to assume that this company is providing a better service and for cheaper.
Who ever got this contract is giving kick backs and sucking out profit… That’s a lot of overhead in of itself.
There are different business models. Some offer turnkey solutions, some focus on core values. Simply for the sake of accountability and additional tasks school buses are used for, it makes sense to keep them under the umbrella of the schools.
None of this advocates running public services like a business.
school busses in australia are never under the control of schools. i understand that our countries are different but its not a universal fact that school busses work the same everywhere
in software engineering we often say: outsource anything that’s not your core value proposition
basically, don’t take valuable time and effort from the thing you do well and want to focus on to do something that you don’t really care about, that someone else is spending time and effort focusing on doing well. in this situation, managing a load of busses isn’t something the schools should be focusing on: they should focus on education, and getting kids there and home should be the job of someone else specialised in doing that task
Taking care of and keeping track of kids is absolutely within a school’s core value proposition!
sure, but that’s a small part of actual work that’s involved in owning and maintaining a fleet of busses, paying drivers who work only a few hours per day, organising scheduling and routes, etc
That somebody requires profit to do it, school can do this at cost…
Again, theory is decent in practice this is how corruption gets done. It is cute to assume that this company is providing a better service and for cheaper.
Who ever got this contract is giving kick backs and sucking out profit… That’s a lot of overhead in of itself.
“at cost” can sometimes be far more expensive than paying someone else to do it
There are different business models. Some offer turnkey solutions, some focus on core values. Simply for the sake of accountability and additional tasks school buses are used for, it makes sense to keep them under the umbrella of the schools.
None of this advocates running public services like a business.
school busses in australia are never under the control of schools. i understand that our countries are different but its not a universal fact that school busses work the same everywhere
our system works great here