Buffalo News - BISON fund grows to include suburbs

Buffalo News - BISON fund grows to include suburbs

There is some good news in this morning's Buffalo News - the Bison Fund (Buffalo Inner-city Scholarship Opportunity Network), a private philanthropic fund that provides scholarships for low income students in grades K-8 is expanding eligibility for the first time outside of the city limits.

This is truly great news. The main point of the story is missed however. He points out that the scholarships "have long been credited with giving a major boost to Catholic Diocese of Buffalo elementary schools and other nonpublic schools". The Superintendent referred to the scholarships as "an angel sent to Catholic schools."

Clearly, these scholarships deliver the greatest benefit to those individuals who, through the scholarships, are given the opportunity to make a choice as to what school is best for their family. Absent these scholarships, these families with modest financial means would be left with no choice but to attend whatever school to which the educational bureaucracy assigned them.

So the first beneficiary is clearly the individual family impacted by this philanthropy. It is also clear that private and catholic schools derive benefit as well, as they are given the opportunity to serve students who they would otherwise not see enrolled at their schools. This kind of benefit is clearly secondary. It could be considered tertiary if you consider the benefit that the Buffalo Public Schools, and therefore the taxpayers receive from the kindness of these donors.

The Bison fund currently provides scholarships to roughly 1,200 students. The City of Buffalo Board of Education serves about 38,000 students http://www.buffaloschools.org/District/District.aspx , and has a budget of $629,869,609 http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/files/1_2_1/2006-07_Adopted_Budget/VI-Board_of_Education.pdf . If you divide that budget by the number of students served you get $16,575.51. Now this may be oversimplified (law of diminishing marginal costs/returns) but the fact that 1,2000 students are enrolled outside of the Public School system eliminates up to $19,890,612 in additional costs to the District.

So while we thank those who support this important philanthropic cause, let's recognize that the program has benefited our entire city, and soon will benefit some of the first ring suburbs as well.