The district is not buying Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority bus passes this school year due to a provision in the most recent state budget that prohibits students from using bus passes purchased by Dayton Public from transferring through the downtown bus hub.
The district is not required to transport high school students, but the last three years DPS provided high school students with RTA bus passes.
Coleman plans to pay roughly $600 a month for Lyft services to get her daughter to and from school. She said if she didn’t make sure her daughter got to school, she would be liable for truancy.
“It felt like it’s the only option,” Coleman said.
She said the rideshare option feels safer than sending her daughter on the RTA bus. She is a single mom of two, and her work schedule prevents her from taking her daughter to school or picking her up.
Coleman said she would prefer that Dayton Public bus high school students on yellow buses.
“When I was in high school, I rode a yellow bus,” she said. “Why do they (DPS) not even have transportation?”
DPS response
DPS superintendent David Lawrence said the district doesn’t have the capacity to bus students to charter schools and to their own high schools.
Under state law, Ohio public schools have to provide the same transportation to school for public, private, charter and STEM school students who reside in their borders. The state mandates that busing be provided for students in grades kindergarten through eighth who live more than two miles away from their school.
Lawrence said there’s been hundreds of cars in the parking lots of the DPS high schools, and he knows there are grandparents, church members and great-grandparents taking kids to school.
But he said he knows this isn’t a sustainable long-term solution. The level of poverty in the city of Dayton is high, he said, and he said the cost of gas and car maintenance will likely make this solution temporary.
“We so appreciate this at the beginning of the year, but we have got to come up with a better solution,” he said.
Taylor said he’s worried about attendance at Belmont High School, which is is located in east Dayton but many of its students come from the west side.
More than a thousand students attend Belmont, but Lawrence said according to a lunch employee on Friday the school had only served about 500 lunches.
Lawrence said truancy officers have been out knocking on doors to make sure students come to school.
“I’ll have a report early next week as to why kids aren’t there, and it’ll be more definitive because we have actually physically talked to parents,” he said.
A community response
Darryl Fairchild, a city commissioner who is running for reelection this year, is working with mayoral candidate Shenise Turner-Sloss to get West Dayton churches and organizations to fundraise enough money to buy students RTA bus passes.
“Our students need a way to get to school,” Fairchild said.
Turner-Sloss said in a statement that the organization, DPS Transportation Coalition, will work to fill the need in the community.
“Whenever Dayton faces adversity, leaders step up and find real solutions,” Turner-Sloss said. “We know that this is a short-term fix for our young people and parents right now, but know that we are working to find a permanent solution.”
Fairchild, the parent of a Stivers High School student, said he was recently at an open house and there was a “lot of conversation” about the transportation problem.
The Stivers Parent Teacher Association has been arranging carpools for students who need a ride to school.
Fairchild said he spoke to one family with a seventh grade student and a high school junior. The junior high student can get bused on a yellow bus to school, but the high schooler can’t.
“Our families are facing logistical issues to get to school,” he said.
E-Bike solution
David Esrati, a local business owner, is collecting information from DPS students who want e-bikes to get to school.
He said roughly 20 students have signed up so far, and he needs about 500 to create safe “bike buses,” which is where a large group of kids would ride together to go to school. He said he would also provide a bike helmet, safety vest and bike lock, along with training.
An e-bike is an electric bike that charges and uses some of the power to help the biker go faster and farther using less of their own power.
“They can go anywhere in the city on their own,” Esrati said.
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