The Challenges to Opening Schools This Fall Start at the Bus Stop

School district leaders feel the mercilessness of the Coronavirus Pandemic in ways most of us can’t appreciate. With school just weeks away, they face not only determining what school will look like but also how to retool existing systems to provide it.  Whether starting the year with all students in buildings, with a hybrid model with some students in buildings on alternating days, or entirely remote learning, they face a dizzying array of decisions to make, tradeoffs to balance, and details to iron out before day one. With many on morning shows, in the media, and on twitter postulating how local leaders should open, an illustration of the logistical challenges leaders face this fall may be helpful. So let’s look at a simple case: bussing.

This fall, bussing might be the most straightforward in districts where all students return to buildings, but there are major differences this year. Implementing recommended social distancing is a big one. The CDC recommends sitting 1 student per row, or leaving alternate rows empty. Those measures can reduce bus capacity by 50% if students reliably don masks, or by 88% without them. This is an enormous problem since a third of public schools’ students, roughly 15 million kids, take nearly half a million busses to school.  

Rounding up more busses is an obvious challenge, but less obvious is the potential scarcity of drivers.  In 2018, a third of districts reported “desperate” or “severe” driver shortages, and another third had “moderate” shortages. And those scarcities were before the pandemic posed significant risks to the 73 percent of bus drivers over the age of 55.

One way around capacity issues is restricting bus service. Missouri schools might offer bussing to students 3.5 or more miles from school, up from the standing 1.5 mile eligibility cutoff. Kentucky’s Department of Education suggests more students walk, potentially using a “walking school bus” arrangement supervised by parents. And Providence, RI floated requiring all students to attend neighborhood schools, derailing all district school choice. Each approach would lighten the bussing burden by increasing parents’ burdens.

Masking riders could be important, keeping bus fleets’ capacity near 50 percent, but someone has to ensure students keep masks on. This fall, will drivers have to both drive and keep riders masked or in assigned seats, with students health on the line? Drivers’ new responsibilities could also include screening riders at boarding which might include temperature checks, a 12-question survey for every rider, or even a daily screening form from parents.

Other problems arise when student fails those screenings. Some counties plan to “isolate” such students on the bus and at school, while in others drivers would keep students at the stop, and wait for parents or school officials to arrive. In either event, the inevitable false positives will tax the transportation system and cause regular delays. Add in the wrinkles of frequent bus sanitization, and the strict record keeping required for contact tracing, and the bussing of a year ago seems like a light lift.

Many districts are taking a hybrid approach, rotating portions of the student body in on different times or days, which lessens the strain on bus capacity by moving half as many students each run. But hybrid models still face the new cleaning and screening requirements and a potential for a driver shortages.

The hybrid model presents its own operational complexities. Districts operating a split-day schedule, bringing some students to school in the morning and some in the afternoon, will need drivers to double their usual routes, while bus companies warn cleanings mean buses “won’t be able to run routes back-to-back,” requiring widely staggered bell schedules. Both split and alternating day schedules will require drivers to know which students are supposed to be picked up at the right day or time. When a third grader shows up at the bus stop on the wrong day, schools will need a plan on who takes custodial responsibility for the student as the rest of the bus, and school, face significant delays.

Both fully in-person and hybrid programs will also need a quarantine protocol in place for when a student or driver tests positive. Will the bus driver and all riders be quarantined? What about their siblings? What about riders on the same bus later that day or week? What about their classmates and teachers? It is still unclear how wide of a quarantine net districts must cast in order to quell an outbreak, but the net will have to extend to busses.

In light of these considerations, an all remote learning model may seem a clearly preferable route for bussing during a pandemic. Aside from the potential losses in educational value that entails, not needing buses in the short run presents a different set of problems because there will be an urgent need for buses again once this threat passes.

With dire revenue predictions, districts could save a great deal this fall by furloughing transportation departments until students return to campus. However, a return to bussing when this unpredictable virus allows won’t be a turnkey operation. Schools could face unnecessary weeks of remote instruction waiting for bussing systems to get back on line, a steep price when students have been out of school for half a year or more.

When, or more realistically while, these bussing details are worked out, school leaders still have to iron out dozens of equally complex problems. Perhaps next we should talk through instruction…

The complexity of bussing during the pandemic illustrates how many new challenges, new costs, and new safety concerns district and school leaders face before opening schools. So the next time you hear a simplified demand for how schools should reopen, remember district leaders are public servants in the pincer grip of this pandemic, working though the nitty-gritty decisions that have no “right” answers, but still deeply affect children’s educations, and their communities’ health.

Nat Malkus is a resident scholar and deputy director for Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.