Throughout the US, more students are attending schools far outside of their neighborhoods, and the districts are struggling to keep up with the increasing reliance on school buses due to a lack of drivers. Now, parents are relying on ride-hailing apps to solve the issue.
School bus reliance across the US is decreasing as many districts struggle to find consistent drivers and more students attend schools outside of their neighborhoods. With pressure mounting on the families to find out how to get their kids to school, parents are getting creative and collaborative when it comes to transportation.
Local and state governments are responsible for how many school buses are offered in a given district. According to a Federal Highway Administration survey, only about 28% of US students take the school bus.
Chicago Public Schools are the nation’s fourth-largest district, and while they still offer rides for disabled and homeless students, only about 17,000 of the district’s 325,000 students are eligible for school bus rides.
Erin Rose Schubert, a volunteer for the CPS Parents for Buses advocacy group, said that this growing issue is leaving many students behind.
“The people who had the money and the privilege were able to figure out other situations like rearranging their work schedules or public transportation. People who didn’t, some had to pull their kids out of school.”
One of the more creative solutions parents are utilizing is the Piggyback Network, which can be used for parents to collaborate and book rides for their kids with each other. The rides themselves cost 80 cents per mile and the drivers are then compensated with credits that they can use for their own kids’ rides.
“It’s an opportunity for kids to not be late to school,” 15-year-old Takia Phillips said on a recent PiggyBack ride, according to AP.
HopSkipDrive is another service that works directly with school districts to help students get reliable transportation. It currently operates in about 600 school districts throughout 13 states.
“Those bus driver shortages are not really going away,” HopSkipDrive CEO Joanna McFarland said.
“This is a structural change in the industry we need to get serious about addressing.”
“Growing up, people used to talk about kids in the short yellow buses. They were associated with a physical disability, and they were teased or made fun of,” Reinya Gibson said, discussing her son Jerren Samuel, who attends a high school in Oakland, California.
“Nobody knows this is support for Jerren because he can’t take public transportation. The school takes care to accommodate his needs as a student with autism, but the district lined up the transportation because there is no bus from their home in San Leandro,” she said.
These companies that are helping families achieve transportation through ride-sharing ensure parents that all drivers are extensively screened. Drivers must have their fingerprints checkers and are required to have some level of childcare or parenting experience. The drivers and kids are also typically given a password to match up, and parents can easily track the rides through the app to ensure their kids arrive at school safely.
Kango is a company that started as a free carpooling app, and it now works with school districts. “Drivers are paid more than they would typically get for Uber or Lyft, but there are often more requirements such as walking some students with disabilities into school,” Kango CEO Sara Schaer said.
“This is not just a curbside-to-curbside, three-minute situation. You are responsible for getting that kid to and from school. That’s not the same as transporting an adult or DoorDashing somebody’s lunch or dinner,” Schaer said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
