Advancing Educational Equity by Modernizing Student Transportation

This post is part of a series that dives into our vision for reimagining student transportation. 

To many, the yellow school bus is an icon symbolizing America’s commitment to extending opportunity to all. And since the mid-20th century, our nation’s student transportation system has been a critical yet imperfect tool towards that end.

But as the ongoing pandemic continues to highlight and heighten the many inequities plaguing our society, it’s time to get serious about creating a student transportation system that advances educational equity instead of undercutting it. 

At a time when tech-enabled transparency, agility and flexibility rule the day in other industries, the U.S. school bus system remains stubbornly cumbersome and opaque. Because children from low-income homes are more likely to depend on busing, they’re disproportionately impacted by the system’s shortcomings—and stand to gain the most if we reinvent it for the future we want to live in. 

Transforming a broken system

Cash-strapped U.S. school districts are spending a staggering $28 billion a year on busing, their second-highest expense after salaries. Our schools and communities deserve more for their money. 

Under the current busing system, parents have no visibility into where children are at any given moment or, often, who is driving them. Bullying and other safety incidents can take months to come to light. Almost all U.S. school buses operate on diesel, emitting 8.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas annually. Districts routinely use pen, paper and outmoded logistics to schedule and coordinate buses—leading to half-empty vehicles, circuitous routes and millions of wasted hours that students could otherwise spend learning, exercising and participating in valuable enrichment activities.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 60% of low-income pre-high-school students ride the school bus, compared to 45% of their better-off peers. In many places, children of color and children with special needs are also disproportionately likely to depend on school buses for transportation. 

These, then, are the students who suffer the most from what some have described as an “exploitation of children's time,” as “students with large average times on buses report lower grades, poorer levels of fitness, fewer social activities and poor study habits.”

And it is these families who will benefit the most if we change how the system works.

Extending opportunity to all

By modernizing student transportation with tech-driven solutions like cloud-based routing platforms and electric vehicles, we can enable schools to create efficient routes that maximize flexibility. Schools can extend busing to and from after-school enrichment programs, allowing all students to access these valuable opportunities without worrying about how they’ll get there or get home. 

In areas that offer school choice (through charter schools or district-wide choice models), a modern, flexible bus system ensures that the freedom to choose is real—and not hampered by transportation constraints, as is now often the case. By replacing one-size-fits-all diesel buses with appropriately sized vehicles (where warranted) and electric vehicles (as quickly as possible), we can make all of our communities safer and healthier.

At Zum, we know that it’s possible to create a flexible, efficient busing system that serves the needs of students, parents, districts and communities. We’re already partnering with 4,000 schools to make this a reality. They include two of California’s largest districts, Oakland and San Francisco. In Oakland, where over 70% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, the share of students who spend over an hour a day commuting to school has plummeted from 70% to 10% since the Zum partnership began.

The beautiful thing about modernizing student transportation is that the technology and know-how exist to make this happen, safely and almost immediately. So let’s make student transportation a vehicle for excellence and equity. We owe it to our children, and we owe it to ourselves. 

To learn more about Zum’s positive impact on equity and student transportation, read our full vision here.