The new school year got underway with some familiar speedbumps for student transportation in a number of cities and suburbs. These kinds of troubles are nothing new, but they seem to be on the rise. That’s a problem because getting eligible students to and from school safely, efficiently, and on time is a basic function of the system. In that spirit, new survey data from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research are timely and interesting (despite the potential conflict of interest stemming from their partnership in the effort with “supplemental” transportation provider HopSkipDrive.)
Data come from two separate surveys. The first was conducted with a random sample of 838 parents of school-aged children, recruited via AP’s AmeriSpeak platform and designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. It was administered online between June 30 and July 11, 2025, and included demographic information about respondents. The second was a group of 510 school administrators recruited via survey company Dynata. There is no further information available about these administrators—location, school type, school size, longevity, etc.—except their job. Their surveys were conducted between June 30 and July 25, 2025.
The most important thing to note is that a majority of parents report providing their own transportation for some or all of their school-aged children. (The survey allowed for multiple responses to the question, thus percentages that add up to more than 100.) Sixty-three percent report driving a child themselves to and from school on a typical day; 33 percent report another family member or friend driving their child; and 5 percent say they use a multi-family carpool. Walking, biking, older students driving themselves, and rideshare use are also reported. Black parents are more likely to drive their children to school than White parents (71 percent versus 58 percent). For those providing their own transportation typically, 32 percent say they do so because no school-based transportation is available to them, 20 percent because it’s easier than availing themselves of school-based options, and 14 percent because of general safety concerns. For families whose students participate in extracurricular activities or before or after school care, school-provided transportation is even less typical. Only 17 percent report using a school bus or other school-arranged vehicle for those activities.
On the other side of the ledger, 43 percent of parents report using a school bus or other school-arranged vehicle on a typical day for at least one of their children. Three percent report using public transportation, but there are no details provided about whether those trips are paid for by the school/district or are self-funded. The vast majority of parents believe that school bus travel is safe—far safer than walking, taking public transportation, or hiring a rideshare—whether they use buses or not.
Interestingly, parents seem quite happy with the transportation plans they have arranged, regardless of type, reporting minimal stress over daily transportation and only rare conflicts between school transportation issues and their own work and personal schedules. Only a tiny fraction of parents report that their student has ever missed school services, tutoring, or field trips due to transportation issues. Even the school choice question—“How likely would you be to send your child to a different school if easier transportation options were available?”—finds few potential takers, with 72 percent saying they are not too likely or not at all likely to switch schools in that case.
Turning to the other survey, the overwhelming message from school administrators is that their current transportation systems are inadequate to the need. Forty-five percent of administrators report that all students in their districts and schools are eligible for school-provided transportation, with lower percentages reporting specific subgroups of students being eligible, such as students with special needs or those experiencing homelessness. (Again, multiple answers were allowed, rendering the eligibility data unhelpfully murky.) And even though large percentages of parents report not using available school-provided options, as found by the other survey, 44 percent of school administrators in this survey say that the number of students eligible for transportation has increased in the last five years. Bus driver shortages, budget reductions (or simply a lack of budget increases), and traffic congestion around schools are all cited as major or minor problems related to transportation. (One assumes the latter is due to all those family vehicles dropping kids off!) Eighty-three percent of administrators report office staffers have had to take on transportation duties in the last year, with 54 percent saying such gap-filling happens on at least a weekly basis. Administrators express concerns over absenteeism, academic outcomes, and providing services for specific subgroups of students due to sub-optimal transportation.
As to solutions: 55 percent of administrators report raising driver pay or benefits to help boost recruitment, 26 percent report cutting or shortening routes to spread out available drivers, 20 percent report changing school day start or end times so drivers could double up, and 13 percent report canceling transportation services for groups of students (such as high schoolers) if it is not mandated by state or local law. The survey also offers several other potential policy changes related to transportation—including creating centralized drop-off and pick-up points and having schools arrange alternatives like cars or vans when traditional buses are unavailable/not tenable—all of which the majority of administrator respondents expressed favor for.
The report offers neither recommendations nor analysis of the survey results. But if I may be so bold, it seems as though parents and school administrators may be on two different pages when it comes to transportation. While administrators are stressing about what can’t be provided to all eligible students—and what might happen as this increasingly becomes the case—families are far more chill about what they provide for their own kids. If a majority of families are providing their own door-to-door transportation at least twice a day (and experiencing little or no scheduling problems to speak of), nothing less than that level of service would likely change their habit if it were offered by their schools. And since that halcyon scenario is unlikely to return, short of miraculous changes to bring an influx of new drivers, these findings indicate that school leaders are fretting unnecessarily on the topic.
With continued enrollment declines, the ongoing expansion of school choice (a topic not explored enough in either of these surveys), and a majority of parents already moved on from the old yellow bus model (maybe because of the rise of work-from-home arrangements) perhaps policymakers can finally accept reality as reflected in these surveys and give their beleaguered school administrators a break: Scrap the tattered vestiges of traditional, universal, district-centered busing; start building new, community-centric models that focus on the neediest students first; pay families who provide transportation on their own; and only after those steps are accomplished, worry about wooing back the hardcore carpool moms, dads, and grandmas.
SOURCE: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “2025 State of School Transportation Report” (September 2025).
