You can’t be a student if you can’t get to school. Despite long-standing state commitments to provide transportation to and from school, regardless of income or ZIP code, children still have trouble getting to school. When one student cannot get to school as easily as another, their educations are not equal. As an inept federal government lets a pandemic rage, schools plan to reopen in a few weeks — that is, if students can get there.
Busing students between home and the schoolhouse is often required by law. In Massachusetts, school districts must provide transportation for all students (except for those who can walk to school) from kindergarten through sixth grade. This forces some middle and high school students — particularly those that can’t take the family car every day — to turn toward public transit. Unfortunately, tying the faulty education-transportation system to the unjust public transportation system translates to more absences and tardiness.
Geographically larger districts, often located in rural areas where public transit is even less available, have more substantial requirements. Regional districts that stretch across multiple municipalities must extend transportation services through the end of high school. Massachusetts even orders districts to find ways to bring students on remote islands to the mainland. While these on-the-books protections might guarantee access, they do not promise equity.
Whether or not districts provide transportation services, affluent families more often drive students to school, while poor students take the bus. In rural areas, students face longer travel times — sometimes more than 30 minutes on the bus — with a rougher ride, less full-time supervision of bus transportation, and more mixing of elementary and secondary school students on the same bus. All of this translates to lower student achievement.
The link between student achievement and transportation to school extends to urban districts. Many cities offer school choice programs that promise higher college enrollment and greater academic success, regardless of a student’s income, race or background. Plenty of critiques have been written about school choice. But, even if we blindly accept the premise that these programs could provide higher-quality education to otherwise disadvantaged students, the promise of choice is empty when students cannot get to school. One study of U.S. cities with large school choice programs found that 1 in 3 low-income families would consider participating in school choice but had inadequate transportation support.
While the big yellow buses are here to stay, creativity could help reduce inequity. In 2010, Boston Public Schools attempted to reinvent its bus routes. At least once per month, 37% of buses arrived late by more than an hour — 60 whole minutes. The solution, rolled out three years later, was an app that shows bus locations, but even that did not predict arrival times. The botched reform and fumbled response only left students behind.
The plague of late buses has persisted until today. On the first day of the last school year, in September 2019, only 43% of buses picked up students on time. At one school, 52 students waited more than three hours for a bus that never came. Some parents resorted to Uber and Lyft just to get their kids to school. To boot, Boston had just hired 31 additional bus drivers! All of this in a district that spends nearly $22,000 per pupil every year, $6,000 higher than the Massachusetts average and nearly double the national average.
Now, with President Trump’s incessant calls for students to return to the classroom, the pandemic could shatter the fragile education-transportation system. The president’s press secretary described returning to school as “perfectly safe,” and the Secretary of Education has repeated the president’s threats to cut funding to districts that do not reopen. Meanwhile, the Trump administration makes no commitment to fund schools enough to protect students or staff. If forced back into the classroom, students without private cars or with parents working on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis — in other words, poor students and their peers of color — would need a safe way to school.
Most students would probably describe their bus rides before the pandemic as crowded. With potential school reopenings, the CDC has some suggestions: one child per row and skip rows when possible. In Massachusetts, where education funding is high and public health concerns are taken seriously, state guidance recommends two children per row, slashing bus capacity by two-thirds. Even if individual classrooms stay separated, buses will inevitably mix students together day after day. Imagine what other states with less money and less caution might allow.
In addition to the health risks and budgetary questions, there is a practical question: Who would drive all the extra buses? Before the pandemic, 90% of American school districts reported bus driver shortages. Out of necessity, some teachers began to double as bus drivers. No matter who drives the bus, they will likely face greater risk as a result, given that transit workers have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis. Some school bus drivers already report that they do not feel adequately shielded by their districts’ plans.
To protect students and their families, bus drivers, and teachers, any return to school — whether hastily forced in a month or strategically planned — requires a deep consideration of how students travel to and from their classrooms. While every school district should fight to protect their students, the responsibility ultimately lies with state and federal governments that can step in and insulate the vulnerable.
The extent to which remote learning levels the playing field for poor, rural and non-white students is questionable, but forcing students back into classrooms has the potential to further divide the haves and have-nots.
Image Credit: “School buses” by JohnPickenPhoto is licensed under CC-BY-2.0