Nationwide, school bus transportation involves large
expenditures that are distributed among a huge number of
providers, both public and private, large and small. The
fragmentation is probably due in part to the long-term, grass-
roots evolution of the activity. In “Accent on Safety: A History
of the National Conference on School Transportation 1939-1985,”
Ernest Farmer reports that in 1840, children in Massachusetts
were the first to be formally transported to schools using
public resources. The transportation entailed contracts with
farmers to take children to and from school.[xix] The first
reference to a school-operated busing program occurs in 1900 in
the state of Florida. The fragmentation of the private-sector
school transportation market is partly responsible for the
dearth of national data on the extent of school district
contracting with private transportation firms. What researchers
are left with is a collection of state-specific research. For
instance, according to the nonprofit Connecticut School