District plan for in-person learning will leave kids behind

Seattle School District parents were undoubtedly thrilled to hear that a plan had finally been reached to return students to four-day-a-week in-person instruction after a year of remote learning. However, what the District’s plan has utterly failed to take into account is one basic but critical question: how are the kids going to get to school? Without a plan to actually get children in and out of school every day, there will be no return to school for many Seattle students.

Transportation for the Seattle School District has long been contracted out to bus company First Student, which provides a fleet of buses and a workforce of professional bus drivers who are represented by Teamsters Local 174. Before the pandemic, school bell times were scheduled around that fleet: drivers would take the younger students (K-5) to school, then the other students, and then do it all again to take them home in the afternoon. However, the District’s current reopening plan involves half-day schedules for all students, meaning that providing transportation for all those students to and from school would require Teamster drivers to clone themselves (and their buses) so that they can be in two places at once.

At first glance, the problem seems at least somewhat solvable: parents who are still working from home will have to pick up the burden of transporting their own children, while the District continues to provide transportation to the “morning shift” of half-day school. Except that this problem is even more serious than can be solved by forcing half the parents to pick up the slack: if bus drivers are only able to cover the morning shift rather than both shifts each day, then they will only be working 16 hours a week … which is the kind of part-time job most of us could not afford to take. Without sufficient drivers, the Seattle School District will likely be unable to provide much school transportation at all. The children will be left behind.

The implications of this situation are dire, and they are direst for the families that have already suffered the most in this pandemic: our most vulnerable families, especially families of color, who may not have the luxury of providing their own daily transportation. For these families, the possible return to in-person learning is just another carrot dangled and snatched away by the Seattle SchoolDistrict.

This ugly problem has a shockingly simple solution: change the start/finish times at school so that the current workforce of drivers and buses can accommodate all children, both directions, every day. However, this is a potential solution that the Seattle School District refuses to even consider.

The stakes could not be higher for Seattle parents. Our children want to return to school. Our teachers and bus drivers are ready to return to work. If something is not done to realistically tackle the problem of student transportation, that dream will crumble yet again.

How can you help? Call the Seattle School District at (206) 252-0000 and ask them how they plan to transport children. Insist on a real solution to this problem.

We have all worked together and made sacrifices to get through this pandemic. We cannot give up now.