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Every school district I have worked in for 22 years asks the same question when a student’s attendance starts to slip: What is going on at home?  

It is a fair question, and often the right one. But before we look at home, I have learned to look at the ride. 

Transportation is usually treated as logistics. A bus shows up, a student gets on, and then the day begins. For most students, that is close enough to true. For students with special needs, experiencing homelessness, in foster care or needing a vehicle outside the standard bus route, the ride means much more than that. It is the first structured interaction of their day, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. 

Recent backs up what I see in my district every morning. Sixty-nine percent of caregivers say a reliable ride leaves their child noticeably calmer. Students who arrive after a smooth transportation morning are far more likely to be calm and ready to learn than students who arrive after a difficult one. 

Behind those numbers are real students who often are unable to manage anxiety about how they get to school. Inconsistent transportation can have a huge impact on academic and social-emotional well-being for these students every day. 

In our Illinois district, we schedule alternative transportation — typically vans and cars sent out on regular routes — to arrive at least 20 minutes ahead of the bell, because we do not know whether a student had breakfast at home. Maybe they did not have time, or the food was not available for them. That 20-minute cushion is one less barrier for a student who already has enough to manage, and it means they get a warm meal and a few minutes to settle before class starts. 

The other piece is the driver. Students on alternative transportation do not always have consistency anywhere else in their day. We cannot always know what happens before they get into the vehicle or after it drops them off. What we can control is whether the same driver shows up at the same time in the same vehicle. That predictability becomes something a student and a family can count on. What’s more, consistency gives the driver a chance to notice when something is off and pass it along before it becomes a bigger problem. 

Transportation can also quickly become a compliance issue for districts that serve certain vulnerable student populations. The federal McKinney-Vento law requires districts to provide a ride to school to students experiencing homelessness, and other federal laws require that foster children and students with individualized education programs or 504 plans receive transportation help as needed.  Two thirds of administrators nationally have seen transportation issues affect their McKinney-Vento or foster care obligations, and 54% report falling short of services they are legally required to provide. 

In my experience, the biggest gap is under-identification. If a student is not flagged as experiencing homelessness under McKinney-Vento’s definitions, transportation never gets triggered, and the compliance clock starts working against the district before anyone even realizes it. That is why our McKinney-Vento parent liaisons build relationships early, so families understand what they qualify for and what the timeline looks like, rather than discovering it weeks into the school year. 

I also want to push back on one instinct I see in districts who are watching every dollar, which is pretty much everyone these days. When a neighboring district asked me what our alternative transportation partnership costs, my honest answer was that it is not the cheapest option available. It is also not the same value as the cheapest option available. 

A day-and-night taxi will get a student from one address to another, but that is a ride, not a service. A service means cameras and GPS tracking on every vehicle, background-checked drivers, and a partner who tells you within 24 hours whether they can meet a student’s needs and holds to it. These are still our students. I would not put anything less in a vehicle with my own children, and I am not willing to put anything less in a vehicle with someone else’s. 

None of this is complicated, and none of it requires a bigger budget than most districts already have. It requires treating the ride to school as part of the school day rather than a separate problem to be solved. When we do that, attendance — and the attendance-based funding many districts rely on — follows. So does trust, from families who have too often been told to wait five days for a solution that should take one conversation. Consistency is the structural piece that makes every other investment in a student’s education stick.

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