I was looking at the
Metis Report from 2016 (fascinating to read for a bunch of reasons, by the way!) and I noticed that they found the transportation costs for the DCC and NEC to only be $837K and $690K respectively, and for all 14 special academic programs they were looking at (10 high school programs and 4 middle school magnets) to be $1.2 million combined. I know that was almost 10 years ago, but even if you double it for inflation it would be less than $3 million for the consortia combined and less than $2.5 million for the special programs-- in other words, around 1/1000th of the district's $3B+ budget.
Does anyone have any more updated information, or does that sound right? I was assuming it was way higher-- even though I know budgets are tight and every million counts, this honestly makes me feel like we shouldn't stress about the financial implications of busing kids to regional/magnet programs (or consider the cost savings of busing as a primary reason to get rid of consortiums.)