Commenter Tamiri from Elkana wrote about her school-bus situation in the Israel section of the forum Imamother.com. She gave me permission to post an edited version.
We have a son going into 8th grade. With no boys' school here, boys must attend school outside the yishuv (settlement) beginning in 7th grade. The moetza (local council) covers busing for boys who go to school in Nechalim or Petach Tikva. Otherwise, parents are on their own. Our son's school is in Ramat Gan.
Bussing costs NIS 720/month, or about NIS 35/day. Last year we paid NIS 625. This sum is over and above the tuition we pay, ~NIS 700/month plus books etc. [MiI: NIS 700 is a bargain for boys these days. 900-1500 is common.]
Last year we paid for this luxury busing. This year, we are reluctant. This seems to be an inordinate amount of money to be spending on one child.Tamiri goes on to explain that she can find a slightly less convenient arrangement where he can take the public bus for NIS 6/day. In the end, she found a teacher from the school willing to drive the boys in exchange for sharing the cost of gas. (The driver could not charge more without having liability insurance.)
We have a similar situation regarding hasa'ah (private bussing) for my 7th-grader costing NIS 370/month, or double what the local bus costs. (We live much closer to school than Tamiri.) When my oldest son attended there had been several recent bus bombings, and we sent him on the private hasa'ah (transportation). If he missed the hasa'ah, he had to pay for the local bus anyway (we don't drive them). So he took the public bus beginning in 8th grade. This meant that he needed to walk 10-15 minutes from the bus stop to school, with the option of catching a second bus to school in a downpour (I doubt he ever did). When the school had a program late at night (popular in Israel) when we would not want him taking the bus, the hasa'ah made a special trip. So we would have to drive him or arrange a carpool.
Fortunately my 7th-grader loves public busses and readily agreed to use the public bus; he already found an eighth-grade neighbor to travel with.
