How much should a daycare charge for transportation costs?
I have just learned that my childs daycare will be charging me $5 per day to take my daughter to/from school each day. (the daycare is in a different school district) I had no idea it would be that much. I'm not sure what to do now. I do really like this daycare. I was really just wondering if this seemed high or average. There are only a few other daycare choices in my area and I'm not real exited about them. There is one other child at the daycare that is being transported to the same school district each day. Does that mean that the daycare is making $10 dollars per day? That does not seem fair. Oh and I guess I should mention that the school is 6 miles away from the daycare.
Public Comments
- the day care isnt making money off of you. that money will go for gas and bus up keep and thats reasonable 25 a week is a half a tank of gas. where i love some charge as much as 10 dollars a day. gas is expensive. so are tires oil and routine stuff chill out its not to bad and its definitely fair
- That actually sounds resonable and just about right.
They are covering gas for the bus, maintenance on the bus and the outrageous cost of insurance that they need in order to transport students.
Since its a daycare and not a public school, they dont get funding and tax money to provide transportation as an elementary school would. And since teh daycare is so close to your home, I'm surprised they even offer you transportation. My son's elementary school is 2 miles away and they dont even offer bus services to us, I have to drive him.
- If it is $5 for 2 rides each day (daycare->school, school->daycare) then it is actually cheap. If it is $5 for 1 ride(school to daycare), then it is about right.
But also depends on many factors. The area you live in. How old is the child. Is the provider parking and picking up, or there is a drive-by pickup yellow line kind of area?
Most likely, the provider or a helper is making a special trip just to pick up from your kid's school.
It is not just the 6 mile drive, it is a bunch of other factors too, like the pickup person HAS to be on time, work through the often chaotic school pickup area, rainy days.
Sometimes kids forget things and just have to go back, or are just late coming to the pickup area.
If you live in an area with an active http://craigslist.org, search for "pickup dropoff" in the childcare category, you'll get an idea of the going rate in your area.
Moms with kids in the same school, who sometimes provide this service might charge less, as they are anyway coming there to pickup their own kids.
And some daycares might charge less than yours, but they might have it built-in into the daycare charges.
- My daycare charges $1.50 per trip, so $3 per day. The bus is loaded with children to go to 5 different elementarys all over our town. The farthest away is probably 5 miles from the center. Part of this fee is the caycare fee for the time the child in on the bus, still in their care.
- That is super cheap if it is $5 for both trips. $5 for one way is about average. Think of the gas, maintenance, babysitting on the bus itself, labor, etc. That is actually really good. And of course they charge each kid, how do you think that daycares make enough money to make a profit and stay open? That is like saying they should only charge $25/day for full day daycare for ALL the kids combined. You are getting off easy and probably would be paying that yourself if you took your child to school and picked her up yourself just in gas. You'd be paying more if you had to miss work, because you would be missing out on that salary too. You always pay for convenience.
