From Jim Metrock:
I’ve got good news and bad news.
The good news is we have finally discovered the BusRadio revenue sharing formula. (We found it in the public records of the Marietta City (GA) school district.)
The bad news is the formula is gobbledygook.
No school board in their right mind would agree to a revenue sharing agreement as vague and unverifiable as this one.
Take a look at this:
If you would like to print this out so you can have more time to ponder how this exactly works, click below
How BusRadio determines how much a particular school district receives from its revenue sharing program.
Now we see why some schools would sign a five-year contract with this controversial company. Now we understand why some transportation directors put pressure on bus drivers to turn off their AM/FM stations and listen exclusively to BusRadio. Now we know why BusRadio can promise schools the moon and deliver nothing or next to nothing. Schools have no way of knowing if BusRadio is paying them their fair share of revenue.
The discretionary component is very clever. This wasn’t part of the original revenue sharing program when BusRadio began. This gives BusRadio a huge amount of "wiggle room."
In the example above, BusRadio has plugged in figures to generate a certain net result. But what if no district listened to BusRadio more than 50% of the time? Then no school would be due ANY money based on Part One -The Formulaic Calculation. That would leave all $50,000 to be distributed at the discretion of BusRadio. How can the school districts know they are getting a fair share based on Part Two – The Discretionary Component? This is all vapor.
BusRadio can send a check in any amount to any school district and tell the district that is all they are due and no one can challenge BusRadio.
What schools need of course is a way to know what other school districts with BusRadio are making from the revenue sharing agreement. Transportation directors talk to other transportation directors and they could compare their usage of BusRadio and the number of students riding and they could ascertain if BusRadio was treating both districts fairly. They could also tell if BusRadio was favoring one district over another. As you would guess, BusRadio is making it impossible for school districts to check on BusRadio’s Revenue Sharing Agreement.
The FCC recently asked BusRadio how much revenue they have shared with each school district. BusRadio supplied the information but wanted the information to be kept from the public.
A company that keeps so much information from the public has no business doing business with public schools.
Here a section of BusRadio’s letter to the FCC answering them when they asked about the money that has gone to school districts. The FCC has cut off the right side of BusRadio’s letter (we have asked them to rescan the letter) but you can still get the idea that BusRadio wants no school officials comparing checks with other districts. If that happened BusRadio would have to be accountable. They would have to explain and justify. So they black everything out.
So the above letter is followed with page after page that looks like the page below. BusRadio doesn’t want anyone to know what school districts they are in or how much money they are paying districts. This makes it impossible for the financial officers of school districts to discover if BusRadio is shorting them.
BusRadio’s motto should be: You Have To Trust Us. There Is Nothing Else You Can Do.
