By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org
As a middle-school student in 1980s Philadelphia, Shelley Hunter remembers getting to and from school pretty easily thanks to the city’s public transit service, SEPTA, which had bus and train routes near her home and her school. Sometimes, she even felt comfortable enough to take a city cab.
Now, Hunter is a single mother of two living in Grapevine, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, juggling her unstable housing situation and early and late shifts at a local hospital where she works as an EEG technician.
In a heavily car-dependent area, getting her own kids to school is a lot harder. Her family has been able to use a school-sponsored ride-hailing service, joining a trend that’s quickly gaining acceptance around the country.
“The DFW area isn’t like New York or Philly — there isn’t a train at your door. In some cities here, you can’t even cross to another city by transit,” Hunter told Stateline. “If we’d changed schools every time our housing situation changed and they had no bus route near them, my kids would have switched four or five times in a year. That would have blown up their education.”
Big, yellow and once ubiquitous on early morning or rush-hour streets, the traditional school bus has been undercut by national bus driver shortages, worsened by the pandemic. And with states stretched thin by federal funding cuts, a pathway has opened for an industry of small-car, ride-hailing and private transport services to ferry children to and from school.
Some school districts sign contracts to gather children every morning in cars or transport vans; in other cases parents pay individually for a driver to arrive, Uber-like, and ferry their child off to class.
Growing interest in charter schools and private vouchers will likely bring more business to these alternatives to traditional school buses. And recently, the shift has been helped by new state laws that encourage school districts to embrace new transportation models.
A new Idaho law this year, for example, allows school districts to use smaller capacity vehicles to carry schoolchildren, not just yellow buses. Similar new laws in Louisiana and Virginia allow districts to hire ride-hailing companies, though Virginia’s is a two-year pilot program.
New Jersey enacted a law last fall allowing school employees who undergo training and pass background checks to transport up to eight students to and from school in personal vehicles.
And in South Carolina, where the state, rather than individual districts, runs the bus system, lawmakers introduced a privatization bill that would have phased out the state’s ownership and operation of yellow buses. It would have allowed districts to choose their own transportation fleet and contract with private companies.
The bill, which died in committee, also would have required South Carolina to sell or lease its yellow buses by 2029, ending state ownership of the system.
A recent State of School Transportation survey, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in partnership with HopSkipDrive, a ride-hailing company that supplements school bus service, found that 80% of school administrators say driver shortages are straining their districts, with two-thirds reporting smaller budgets despite rising demand.
Three-quarters of school administrators link poor transportation access to chronic absenteeism. In another survey by the same group, parents, and especially mothers, reported missing work — and sometimes losing their jobs — because they often got stuck in traffic jams that made them late. Respondents reported that students missed meals, tutoring and extracurricular activities.
“When school transportation isn’t running as it should, we see a direct impact on attendance. Families who don’t have reliable alternatives often end up missing school entirely or showing up late, which disrupts learning and stability,” said Miriam Vasquez, executive director of student welfare and attendance at the Alameda County Office of Education in California.
But critics, including the lobbying association for school bus contractors, said the changes could undermine safety.
“Buses are built to withstand collisions in ways no passenger vehicle can,” Curt Macysyn, executive director of the National School Transportation Association, told Stateline. “One bus takes 36 cars off the road, and drivers have specialized training you don’t get anywhere else. I haven’t seen another model that replicates all of those pieces.”
Filling gaps
Around 2023, Hunter was stretched thin. She didn’t have a home of her own, so she had been living with her kids at friends’ homes. She spent a lot of money trying to get her children to and from school safely.
At first, Hunter tried Uber and Lyft, but anxiety overwhelmed her with each trip. She began downloading tracking apps and paying friends to accompany her children just to make sure they made it to class safely. But that started becoming too emotionally and financially overwhelming.
It wasn’t until she contacted the school district that she learned she was eligible for help under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a 1987 law that allows students experiencing homelessness to stay in their original school and receive transportation assistance.
“I never wanted my kids to switch schools because it’s stressful and they learn less,” said Hunter. “I also wouldn’t have known if I was eligible for assistance without asking.”
The district put her in touch with HopSkipDrive.
Operating in 17 states, HopSkipDrive offers a small-vehicle ride-hailing service covered under the McKinney-Vento law for families with unstable housing situations. The company operates similarly to ride-hailing companies such as Uber, but it contracts directly with schools, camps and districts through agreements that usually include a base trip fee plus mileage.
HopSkipDrive co-founder Joanna McFarland isn’t advocating for replacing the yellow bus model, or for shrinking routes or service, she said. Rather, she is lobbying states to allow more flexibility for districts to use small-vehicle services for the hardest-to-reach students.
Vasquez, of Alameda County, works almost exclusively with district students eligible to attend their home schools under the McKinney-Vento law. She noted that some families may not be aware of the transportation benefits available to them, and sometimes have to be persuaded to participate, given the stigma of their situation.
Under McKinney-Vento, districts are legally responsible for providing transportation, but only what’s considered “reasonable.” Vasquez points out that “reasonable” often ends up being a mass transit card or bus pass, which may not necessarily be safe or age-appropriate.
It’s why, she said, Alameda County contracted with HopSkipDrive to fill some of the gaps for those families in 2024.
“It’s very layered. We don’t just need more buses, we need routes that match bell schedules, laws that make it safe to transport younger kids, and case management that makes sure families actually know their options,” said Vasquez.
According to the State of School Transportation survey, roughly a quarter of school administrators say their school or district has cut or shortened bus routes in response to driver shortages.
In Ohio, multiple districts canceled public high school busing this year while still transporting students to private or charter schools under new state mandates. Several New Jersey districts eliminated“courtesy busing,” prompting more walks to school for students within 2 miles. A similar change affected middle and high school students in Florida’s Duval County last year.
“While cutting transportation has become a default option, it has unacceptable consequences,” said McFarland. “What schools really need is a policy that gives them the flexibility to add more tools, like small-vehicle options, so they can get more kids to school, often in less time and at lower cost.”
McFarland told Stateline when she co-founded the service in 2015, she was one of those parents who needed to sacrifice working time to take her kids to school. A decade later, more than 10,000 schools across the country use HopSkipDrive, she said.
Fewer yellow buses
The safest form of transportation to and from school is still the yellow bus, said Macysyn, of the National School Transportation Association. For Macysyn, the COVID-19 pandemic turned a predictable model of school transportation on its head.
During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, many bus drivers retired, left the workforce or in some cases died, and districts have scrambled to find someone to take the wheel, be it substitute teachers, administrators and, sometimes, even parents.
The number of bus drivers decreased by 15% between September 2019 and September 2023, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Private school bus contractors now account for 38% of the nation’s pupil transportation services, according to the National School Transportation Association.
In the changed post-pandemic school transportation system, Macysyn worries that small-car and ride-hailing alternatives will compromise on safety and reliability as they push efficiency and expediency.
“I’ve yet to see anybody replicate the yellow bus system in its entirety,” he said. “The bus, the driver training, the safety standards, the student management and being able to put all of it together and make it work.”
A major focus for yellow bus advocates has been under-the-hood laws, which allow bus driver applicants to earn a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) without having to identify and explain engine components during the road test.
Since then, these laws have passed in 12 states: Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Macysyn believes these laws, as well as boosting pay for bus drivers, can rebuild the workforce. He also cautions against privatization bills like the one in South Carolina, arguing that individual vehicles taking kids to school wouldn’t be more cost-effective than the yellow bus model.
“Until you lose it, people don’t realize what would be gone if the yellow bus system disappeared,” he said. “Transportation is the entry point to education. Yet every time there’s a budget crunch, buses are the first thing on the chopping block. If we don’t get kids to school, what happens in the classroom is irrelevant.”
Back in Grapevine, it’s been two years since Hunter first signed up to use the HopSkipDrive service, and though her oldest has graduated, her 13-year-old son still uses it.
Hunter says her children developed personal, intergenerational relationships with their HopSkipDrive driver. She describes her decision to use the service as a “blessing” and says her children’s school commutes have been cut in half.
“The people that are driving are kind to my kids,” Hunter said. “They’re not just driving; they care.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
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