For most students, riding the school bus each day isn’t seen as a privilege. Stepping into that bright yellow vehicle packed with dozens of peers each morning and afternoon, you assume it will take you where you need to be, as it has for years before. However, in a district faced with debilitating bus driver shortages, this typically mundane routine in a student’s life has become the center of a debate about privilege, diversity and student voice.
On August 9, 2023, the first day of school in JCPS, new bus routes and start times culminated in disaster. Students were stuck on buses for hours, and some didn’t arrive home until 10 p.m.
This transportation fiasco revealed cracks in the foundation of JCPS’s school board, resulting in heated arguments, tense votes and students feeling sidelined.
On April 10, the board voted 4-3 at a hastily called meeting to eliminate transportation to most magnet and traditional schools. While students and community members could provide input at previous meetings, this one, where the decision was made, did not include public comment. Some community members claimed that the meeting’s short notice was intended to discourage protests that took place at prior meetings.
Most high school students can’t vote in school board elections, though the board makes some of the most important decisions about their education. Among 17 high school students surveyed, 47% said their school board does not value their opinion. Only 8% responded that their board does appreciate their opinion.
Greyson Lindblom is a student at DuPont Manual, a magnet school that would not receive transportation under the district’s new plan. While Lindblom will remain at Manual, he’s concerned about losing students who will transfer to another school.
“A lot of those people are lower income, or their parents work full-time jobs, and they don’t have the resources, and just as a school community, we are losing out on their perspective and what they have to offer,” he said.
Lindblom believed that the board disrespected student perspectives by prohibiting public comment at the vote.
“If you are making all of these decisions for so many different students and teachers and families and communities, and you’re not going to let them tell you what they think about what you’re doing to them and how you’re affecting their lives and stuff that’s stupid,” he said.
Duong Trieu, a fellow DuPont Manual student, believes that the board does not value her opinion. Trieu’s mother works long hours and won’t be able to transport her, so she must find carpooling to get to school this year.
“The people the school board is serving are the students,” she said. “When you take a child’s only way of higher quality of learning, you are taking away a child’s future and the children coming after them.”
A school board is entrusted to provide the best possible education it can for the students it represents. Yet the board’s decision to revoke transportation for magnet school students left a lasting impact and undermined students’ trust in the body meant to support them.
Courtesy photo
