It's obvious to say that school bus transportation systems help ensure students get to school - but your bus policies and routes can have more impact on absenteeism than you might realize. With much of your state funding dependent on keeping attendance high, this should be a priority as you plan your bus system.
For example...
Can Route Lengths Affect Attendance?
YES!
A major study published in 2022, based on data obtained across the 2010s, showed a significant link between route length and attendance. Students whose bus rides were over an hour had 12% higher absenteeism, compared to students whose rides were half an hour or less.
It's not hard to see why. Nobody enjoys hour-long commutes, kids or adults. A child with an hour-long bus ride is likely having to get up two hours before their first bell, around 6AM or even earlier. That's not just bad for attendance, it's also developmentally harmful to force kids to wake up that early.
Creating your bus routes with an eye towards keeping ride times low will almost certainly improve attendance. That's one more reason to consider staggered bells, and multiple bus runs in the morning, rather than using long single routes.
How Does Cutting Routes Harm Attendance?
Another big problem lately is schools outright cutting bus routes, forcing more parents to drive their students to school directly. This is causing significant problems for schools, such as incredibly long lines for drop-off. Reports have come in about schools where the drop-off line is an hour long, sprawling into a gridlock that affects the entire local street system.
While no studies have been done yet, it's not hard to imagine time-stressed parents having to make hard choices about whether their child goes to school, or if they get to work on time. And work will probably win out, especially if the parent fears losing their job.
And that's not to mention low-income families who may not have proper access to transportation, without buses.
Cutting routes should be avoided at all costs. It's a short-term "solution" which creates nothing but larger problems down the line. You'll be hurting your community and, most likely, hurting attendance as well.
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PRESIDENT
Sonia has been involved with BusBoss since the late 1990’s, and has personally overseen many projects for various customers ranging from large urban and suburban districts to smaller rural school districts from all over the country.