The wheels on the bus are often still these days. Public school districts struggle to find drivers, and more students attend schools far outside their neighborhoods. State and local governments decide how widely to offer school bus service. Lately, more have been cutting back. Transportation responsibility is shifting to families.
Ismael El-Amin was driving his daughter to school when he got an idea for a new way to carpool.
As they drove through Chicago, Illinois, El-Amin’s daughter spotted a classmate riding with her own dad. For 40 minutes, the commuters rode along the same congested highway.
“They’re waving to each other . . . I’m looking at the dad. The dad’s looking at me,” says El-Amin.
He thought, “Parents can definitely be a resource to parents.” He went on to found Piggyback Network, a service parents can use to book rides for their children.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the nation’s fourth-largest district, has significantly curbed bus service in recent years. It still offers rides for disabled and homeless students in line with a federal mandate. But most families are on their own. Only 17,000 of the district’s 325,000 students are eligible for school bus rides.
The school system launched a pilot program this month allowing some students who attend out-of-neighborhood magnet (public schools offering specialized curriculum, perhaps focusing on science or arts) or selective-enrollment schools to catch a bus at a nearby “hub stop.” It aims to provide rides for about 1,000 students by the end of the school year.
It’s not enough to make up for the lost service, says Erin Rose Schubert, a volunteer for the CPS Parents for Buses advocacy group.
Some parents “were able to figure out other situations like rearranging their work schedules or public transportation,” she says. But other families struggled to find workable solutions.
On Piggyback Network, parents can book a ride for students with another parent traveling the same direction. Rides cost roughly 80 cents per mile. The drivers are compensated with credits to use for their own kids’ rides.
Piggyback Network has arranged a few hundred rides in its first year operating in Chicago. El-Amin is contacting drivers for possible expansion to Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas. It is one of several start-ups filling the void.
HopSkipDrive launched a decade ago in Los Angeles, California. It contracts directly with school districts to assist students without reliable transportation. Regulations keep it from operating in some states, including Kentucky. A group of Louisville students is lobbying to change that.
“Those bus driver shortages are not really going away,” HopSkipDrive CEO Joanna McFarland says. “This is a structural change in the industry we need to get serious about addressing.”
