Rethinking the Ride to School
By WP BrandStudio
For the first time in decades, organizations are improving transportation for students—and potentially reshaping their lives in the process.
The largest mass transit system in the U.S. doesn’t involve trains or subways, nor does it transport working adults or intercity travelers. It’s the system of nearly half a million school buses used by more than 25 million children every day[1]—and it’s been neglected for decades.
“School transportation hasn’t changed much since it started [in the 1970s],” said Jennifer Schiess of Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit aimed at improving outcomes for underserved children—partly due to stagnant state funding and rising costs. “There hasn’t been a lot of money available to innovate,” said Schiess.
Most of the school buses currently in operation expose children to toxic diesel fuel emissions[2], and in some cases, bullying that can interfere with cognitive development[3][4]. Moreover, the system has failed to meet the needs of an ever-expanding variety of riders, from students who choose to attend a school outside of their home district to kids in foster care who want to stay in the same school when they relocate.
Challenges like these are prompting outsiders to reinvigorate and rethink school transportation. In Virginia, an energy company is leading an experiment with electric buses, for example, which emit fewer toxins[5][6]; and academics in Indiana are training bus drivers to support students’ social-emotional skills[7].
Additionally, ride-share companies are giving an alternative to public buses by offering services that get kids to and from school and extracurricular activities. The Los Angeles-based company HopSkipDrive, for instance, partners with over 180 schools and districts nationwide to find alternate ways to transport children. And its nimble, community-level approach—with an emphasis on safety—has been a game-changer for families and students.
“We’re providing more visibility, flexibility and safety that enables schools to address the changing needs [of families],” said Joanna McFarland, CEO and co-founder of HopSkipDrive.
The far-reaching effects of an overburdened system
One reason for those changing family needs is the expansion of school choice programs, which have ballooned in recent years due to increased federal funding[8][9]. These programs let students attend schools outside of their neighborhood or home district, which has created an increasingly expensive and complex system of district-provided transportation[10].
As a result, local districts have outsize transportation bills, and many students contend with long bus rides or unreliable public transit, making it all but impossible to get to some of the schools that they would like to attend[11].
Meanwhile, districts are also tasked with providing transportation to special education students whose Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) include specialized transport, as well as homeless and foster youth, who can opt to continue attending the same school if they relocate— provisions of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act.
As a result, said Schiess, “How [districts] think about routing has to shift. That hasn’t necessarily happened in a lot of places.”
Many school districts also don’t count daily ridership or track where and when children get on and off the bus—crucial information, given the research linking chronic absenteeism to decreased academic performance[12][13]. One study found that students are around seven times more likely to drop out if they’re chronically absent for any year between grades 8-12, for example[14]. On top of all that, there’s a national bus driver shortage, meaning there is virtually no way for these systems to catch up with demand under the current model[15].
But this storm of challenges creates space for companies to partner with schools and districts, and to bring new technologies and expert personnel to an overburdened system. HopSkipDrive, for example, can utilize GPS technology to gather and analyze data on school bus mileage and arrival times, potentially revealing how much a given route correlates with students’ academic performance and behavior[16].
“We know that if [students] are stressed out about getting to school, then that’s going to show up in their grades. And we can reduce that burden from children,” said Qiana Patterson, Vice President of Strategic Development for HopSkipDrive.
A service to meet the needs of modern schools and families.
Transportation limitations place a burden on parents, too; HopSkipDrive co-founder Joanna McFarland remembers she and her friends struggling to grow their careers while getting their kids to school, sports and activities.
“Everybody had a version of the transportation story, from ‘my kid got into this great school in the opposite direction of where I work’ to ‘I have three kids and two of them have to be in opposite directions at the same time,’” said McFarland.
She and fellow founders Carolyn Yashari Becher and Janelle McGlothlin decided to build a ride-share company around that common frustration, making safety the number one priority.
CareDrivers for HopSkipDrive must pass a 15-point eligibility test and have five years of caregiving experience. Additionally, a support team monitors rides in real time, and can react to address any issue, finding an alternative CareDriver if one gets a flat tire, for example. And the HopSkipDrive app lets parents as well as schools book children’s rides and track their location from start to finish.
“It’s about providing peace of mind to everybody,” said McFarland.
That includes any family with school-related transportation needs, whether a child needs a ride in the morning or reliable after-school pickup while parents are still at work.
Reliable transportation for homeless and foster youth
Homeless and foster youth, who often struggle with transportation, also utilize HopSkipDrive. During a recent two-year pilot program in Los Angeles County, 89 percent of 1,131 foster youths traveling to their school of origin used the company’s service, rather than taking the bus or being driven by a caregiver reimbursed by the county.
“If a child gets moved to a new home at 10:30 at night, we’re able to get them a ride to school the next day,” McFarland said.
And that sense of security could be crucial; studies have found that foster youth can lose four to six months’ worth of academic progress per move as they face the hurdles associated with switching schools, including changes to their social circle and surroundings.
“We have to understand the huge inequity around transportation as it pertains to the whole child,” said Patterson.
After all, she said, students who don’t have a ride to school probably don’t have a ride to weekend SAT-prep classes, summer internships or experiential learning opportunities at museums either—all things that give them a potential leg up. Kids living in South L.A. who’ve never been to the beach, for instance, are “probably less apt to dream of becoming marine biologists,” said Patterson.
Reliable transportation opens up doors that students might not otherwise imagine. And until a more encompassing transportation system exists for all students, flexible solutions like ride-share services can move the needle.
Added Schiess: “If kids can’t get to school, they can’t learn—bottom line.”
Learn more about HopSkipDrive
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Sources:
[1] https://www.americanschoolbuscouncil.org/about/
[2] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/clean-school-bus-pollution-report-card
[3] https://ptsi.org/bullying-on-the-bus/
[4] https://www.edutopia.org/article/building-students-resilience-bus
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/electric-school-buses-are-coming-to-virginia/2019/09/07/f69f813e-cf35-11e9-8c1c-7c8ee785b855_story.html
[6] https://environmentminnesota.org/reports/mne/electric-school-buses-can-reduce-kids%E2%80%99-exposure-toxic-fumes-0
[7] https://www.edutopia.org/article/building-students-resilience-bus
[8] https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/school-choice-your-options/
[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/22/what-school-choice-means-in-the-era-of-trump-and-devos/
[10] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/88481/transportation_brief_final_errata_2.pdf
[11] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/03/16/the-barriers-that-make-charter-schools-inaccessible-to-disadvantaged-families/
[12] https://bellwethereducation.org/sites/default/files/Bellwether_Bus-WFF-Transportation_FINAL.pdf
[13] https://www.epi.org/publication/student-absenteeism-who-misses-school-and-how-missing-school-matters-for-performance/
[14] https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/REPORT_Chronic_Absenteeism_final_v5.pdf
[15] https://www.npr.org/2019/02/06/692115936/facing-a-shortage-of-bus-drivers-school-districts-scramble-to-get-students-to-cl
[16] https://www.hopskipdrive.com/
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