Canada has dedicated school busses as well. They are built differently because it’s a different job. The seats are arranged differently to hold lots of small humans in a seated arrangement, more than a standard city bus would. Also school busses are only needed part of the year so you don’t want to have extra city busses (which are much more expensive and higher maintenance) sitting around waiting to do that job. The school busses here are private contractors as well, but they use these special busses that are designed to do the job at hand as efficiently as possible. School buses are much more primitive and cheaply built than city busses because it’s a much lighter duty application. They run short routes exactly twice a day, so they are very simple steel boxes with vinyl seats in them, simpler engines, simple single-axle drivetrains, etc. Surprisingly, they have outstanding safety records, which you would not expect to look at them.
I think it all makes perfect sense. 
