A group of Chicago Public Schools parents fed up with a lack of busing for students at magnet and selective enrollment schools during the 2023-24 school year, took their cause Tuesday to City Hall in a spirited protest calling for busing for all students across Chicago.
More than a hundred people gathered at the Daley Plaza downtown, using the symbolism of the traditional yellow bus to drive home their message. Wearing school bus-yellow shirts and holding signs shaped like school buses, they demanded busing for the 5,500 students who had been promised transportation when enrolling in district magnet and selective enrollment schools.
A handful of elementary-school-age students attended the event with their parents, skipping recess, lunch or classes to advocate for their transportation.
“We all want equitable education opportunities for all students, regardless of their race, their income, their neighborhood, their background,” said Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago, a nonprofit advocating for parents to have a voice in public education.
“Parents have made monumental sacrifices to get their kids to school, often to the detriment of their jobs and their pocketbooks and their family and household responsibilities,” he said. “This is an all-consuming task.”
The protest was organized by CPS Parents for Buses, a volunteer group of parents across the city who found themselves scrambling to get their children to school after the district announced three weeks before the school year began that general education students would not have busing.
Without school buses, parents and children undergo daily commutes of up to four hours, either driving or transferring between buses and trains to attend school.
Since August, CPS has provided transportation only for students with disabilities or who have specialized education plans that may require transportation, such as individual education plans or 504 plans. It also provides transportation for students in temporary living situations, for whom the district is federally mandated to provide transportation services.
The district cited an ongoing bus driver shortage in an August letter to parents behind the decision to halt busing for the remaining 5,500 students across the school system. Despite increased wages and hiring fairs offered by the district, bus drivers were still in short supply in December, leading to discontinued busing into the 2024 spring semester.
As of Monday, the district said it buses 8,395 students with disabilities and 135 students in temporary living situations and that it provides stipends to 3,800 additional students, according to CPS. Requests for transportation are processed as they are submitted, the district said.
Parents and advocates’ demands to the district include a long-term commitment to bring back busing, which they say was promised to children accepted to magnet and selective enrollment schools.
And until more drivers can be recruited, parents are asking CPS for “immediate” transportation stipends to offset out-of-pocket costs for parents paying for public transportation and, in some cases, pricy third-party ride-share services.
In a statement to the Tribune, a CPS spokesperson said providing stipends to general education students is not feasible for the district, which is projecting a budget deficit for next year. Students who qualify for district-mandated transportation but do not have access to services this year can receive reimbursement for a CTA Ventra card valued at $35 per month.
Those protesting also recognized parents that they say have been forced to transfer their kids to other schools because the demands required to transport their children to school were too great.
“Families who have somehow cobbled together the time and resources to make this work are the lucky ones because many other families couldn’t afford the sacrifice,” said Jessica Handy, executive director of Stand for Children Illinois.
CPS said the district has no data to support claims that students had been forced to transfer due to transportation challenges and asked parents for data supporting the allegations.
In addition, school leaders are committed to “finding a solution to this ongoing national bus driver shortage and its impact on our CPS families,” the district said.
“We will strive to give families a more timely transportation update for the 2024-25 school year,” the statement read.
CPS parent Emily Liu brought her son, Eric Xia, who attends Skinner North Classical School on the Near North Side, to the protest with her to teach him about his right to protest and help him understand why he suddenly wasn’t able to take the bus to school.
Liu added that while she is grateful to have flexibility in her remote work-from-home job, in addition to another parent organizing a carpool from their home neighborhood in the South Loop, planning transportation to school creates stress for her.
“It always has to be an arrangement to get the kids to school,” Liu said at Tuesday’s protest. “And I get worried about driving other kids to school if there’s an accident.”
“It’s really dreadful,” added Young Ri, who carpools with Liu to ensure her son 9-year old, Noah, can get to Skinner North.
Liu said their children would often say the school bus rides were the best part about school.
Eric, 9, laughed and smiled proudly as he held up a big yellow sign he painted himself calling for more buses and joined a group of kids in chants of “All I want is transportation.” He said he missed recess Tuesday to be downtown, and although he hasn’t been able to ride the bus this year, he still “loves the school.”