“Who is paying for the door to door service?
Usually it ends up being the taxpayers. Rather than having the SD arrange and provide bussing, The schools lobby for the ability to provide bussing themselves and pass the bill to the SD.”
That is actually not correct. A number of schools have their own buses or bus companies which contract with the school district to provide busing. The District does not have nearly enough resources to provide services for all students in the district and has to contract out services.
No different than all other districts.
And the amount the contract is for does not provide more for stopping in front of a house (nor is the cost higher in most cases). So there is no extra cost to the district for the extra stops made by the contractor.