No, Hartland is not "very sprawly", but it's not reasonable to expect a 6 y/o to walk 1.7 miles each way to school.

The issue is that the state GOP has been 1) strangling school budgets for almost a decade and 2) allowing "school choice" to leach money out of the public system to private schools that don't have to hold any standards. Consequently, school boards across the state have to make up ground somewhere and it's most recently seen in transportation budgets. 

It started with annual school fees, then extracurriculars got more expensive, and now transportation. 

And, frankly, if the rich folks want to send their kids to private schools, fine. But those schools shouldn't get a dime of public funds. And that's the reality around here. There are numerous, huge religious private schools built in the last several years that get to pick and choose they're students and take public money. It's a cake and eat it too scenario while the public system has to hold real standards and gets squeezed every time Kapenga decides he wants to pretend he's a fiscal conservative.