TOP STORY
Light rail is a school transportation option for students in Phoenix, where public transit first took hold four decades ago.
In Transit School districts increasingly look to public agencies as a transportation option
By Art Gissendaner P
hoenix Union High School District students have used the city’s buses to get to school for almost four decades. District officials said they have rarely, if ever, complained about financing student transportation as a result.
Elsewhere, school districts like Seattle, Milwaukee, Chicago, New
York and Baltimore are among those that for years have also been using public transit to help students get to and from class. But in a stagnant economy, more school districts are looking to do the same, although skeptics say the jury is still out on just how much money is saved and to what extent children are being jeopardized to realize those savings. School districts are eliminating bus routes, privatizing services,
charging fees and laying off employees to meet dwindling bud- gets. Still, many districts don’t consider public transit to be an alternative to the yellow school bus but rather an option to their own fleets and those of private contractors. NSTA estimates that a third of the approximately 480,000 school buses in the United States are owned and operated by private bus companies. Opponents of public transit said school districts should not
be so willing to move away from the safety of school buses. Tey cited bus construction, driver training and the potential for stranger danger as concerns. It is the safety of the younger students that concerns student transporters, said Bob Riley, ex- ecutive director of NASDPTS. “Certainly I think students are better off on the yellow school
bus because of the bus construction and the fact that drivers are trained to deal specifically with kids,” Riley said. “Transit drivers are not trained to deal with kids, and you don’t know who will be riding with the kids. Conditions on a transit bus are
24 School Transportation News Magazine November 2012
much less controlled from a student’s perspective.” Attorney Peggy Burns, owner of the Education Compliance
Group, said the level of school district liability for students who may be injured, molested or involved in an improper relation- ship as a result of a contact made on public transit during school hours most likely will be determined by the court. “Te bottom line is that, in most states, a school district likely
will be exonerated in the absence of a state law or district policy that prohibits the practice of using public transit to transport regular education students,” she said.
PROS AND CONS Public transit works better for high school students because
most campuses are located on major thoroughfares or near city bus stops, instead of tucked away in neighborhoods like elementary and middle schools. Still, districts can shy away from contractual agree- ments with transit companies. Instead, they purchase bus passes and distribute them to qualified students. Te advantages can in- clude larger route flexibility, time of use (extracurricular activities) and lower transportation and bus maintenance costs, as districts are only charged a reduced student fee for each ride. Public transit also has its vulnerabilities. Labor actions such as
strikes can prevent students from getting to school, smart cards can be lost, and students sometimes must take several buses to get to school. Practice makes perfect, though, and that practice has become
so commonplace in Phoenix that it’s difficult to pinpoint when it began. Irene Diaz, the districts’ supervisor of discipline and security, said the partnership dates back to at least 1973. A little more than
Phoenix Union High School District
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