How School Buses Became a Fight in Ohio's Private Charter School Wars

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M.J., a student at Meadowdale Career Tech Center, a high school in Dayton, Ohio, was riding the Route 8 bus the morning of April 4. From the window he saw Alfred Hale, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, waiting outside of the In & Out Restaurant and Carry-Out, next to the Greater Dayton RTA's downtown bus hub.
'I've seen him around a couple times,' M.J. says. 'I never heard of him doing no bad stuff.' Shortly after 7 a.m., M.J. continues, a man shot Hale to death: 'I didn't really see much, but I had seen the dude grab [Hale], and then… shots. It was quick, and then he ran away.' Hale ultimately died from his injuries.
That incident left M.J. feeling scared, so he has asked not to use his full name for this piece to protect his privacy. 'Downtown,' he says, 'you won't get messed with if you mind your business and stay away from the street.'
But being 'messed with' at the bus hub is a pattern students talk about when sharing their experiences riding mass transit to school alongside adults.
Under Ohio law, public schools have for decades been required to provide buses for students at private and charter schools, with some exceptions, or face funding cuts from the state government. But an insufficient number of buses and drivers forced Dayton Public Schools (DPS) to give up using yellow buses for students at the district's public high schools in order to make some of those vehicles available to transport private- and charter-school students; the district now pays for public transportation, or RTA, passes for public high-schoolers who need them.
This busing system is another example of taxpayer money being used to support nonpublic education. As ProPublica has reported, there's a growing push in states across the country to allow families to access public-education funds to pay for their kids to attend private schools, including religious institutions, through what are known as 'vouchers.' This movement is particularly strong in Ohio, where taxpayer money has even been used to directly fund the construction of religious private schools.
During the last fiscal year, the state government spent $617.9 million on regular education transportation. Public-school districts like Dayton's receive that money, but then must pay for busing to private and charter schools. Meanwhile, this spring, Ohio House Republicans passed a proposed state budget that would make a massive cut to public-school funding. DPS Superintendent David Lawrence calls the reallocation of funds to charter schools yet another 'attack on public education.'
Lawrence tells Teen Vogue that if the district wasn't forced to use a portion of its transportation budget for private- and charter-school kids, every public-school kid would have access to yellow buses. Instead, public resources are being allocated away from public schools, while students at those institutions are forced to take a mass-transit option they say is less safe and less reliable.
Over the years DPS has experimented with various ways of making sure kids have necessary transportation, including yellow buses, busing contracts, and public transportation (RTA).
Late last year, Meadowdale students on the school paper, the Daily Dale, conducted a poll about their peers' experiences riding the RTA: Of the 24 respondents, over 60% said they witnessed fights on mass transportation; over 40% reported being exposed to drug use; and one-third indicated they'd been exposed to sexual activity. Nearly 80% reported being late for school because of RTA buses.
'Sometimes the [RTA] buses aren't even coming at all,' freshman Amir Palmer tells Teen Vogue. 'It's caused me to be late to school sometimes.'
While riding the RTA, Amir says, he has also seen drugs, sexual activity, and violence. 'This one man offered me drugs while I was just standing there at the bus stop waiting,' he recalls. It was a cold day, so he thought the man was just breathing out hot air, but then he realized the guy was smoking something. 'He was like, 'Do you want some?' [I] just walked away because I was scared.'
Other students in the survey mentioned seeing knives and guns on the bus. And two years ago, says junior Ziza Wynn, she was riding to school with another girl a grade above her. A man started harassing the other girl, asking her for her contact information; when the girl said no, he flashed a gun at her.
More recently, Ziza was waiting longer than usual for a bus and decided to walk home, when a man came up to her and asked for her contact information. He 'kept following' her, she says.
A similar situation happened to junior Laylah Ichchou, but she says she had friends with her, one of whom started yelling to scare the man away. '[Our friend was like], 'They're little kids!'' she continues. 'He was following us around the hub.'
Says Laylah, riding the RTA does teach students independence, but she's still concerned about the safety of teens who have to ride with random adults: 'It's a lot of stuff that we shouldn't see while we get on the bus.'
To protect students, Lawrence says, the district sends safety and security officers to the downtown hub every afternoon. The district has said that it has spent about $35,000 per month on extra supervision, which, in the past, also covered two local libraries, according to the Dayton Daily News. (Teen Vogue has repeatedly reached out to the RTA for comment, but has not received a response.)
In comments about the school district's busing model to the Dayton Daily News in April, Greater Dayton RTA CEO Bob Ruzinsky said, 'Dayton Public [S]chools are the responsible party. It's their students, it's their responsibility to transport their students, and they should be solving this problem.'
Almost immediately after Hale's death, two Dayton-area state representatives proposed a solution: Ban student transfers at the downtown bus hub. That amendment is still under consideration.
Costs are another concern. The state reimburses DPS for some of its transportation costs, but the district is still paying millions out of pocket, including to cover RTA passes for public high-schoolers who need one.
Says Lawrence, the prioritization of private- and charter-school kids points to a wider problem in society. 'Working-class kids are not a priority for people right now,' he explains. 'We live in a nation where we make it a big deal to separate people and then put 'em in tiers where one tier is better than the other.'
The business manager for DPS, Marvin Jones, told the Dayton Daily News that it would take 73 new buses to transport all kids in the district to public, private, and charter schools. Each bus costs $150,000, for a total of roughly $11 million, according to Jones. At the same time, school districts nationwide, including DPS, are facing a shortage of bus drivers, due in part to low pay.
Meadowdale students visited the Ohio Statehouse twice in recent years to try persuading lawmakers to do something about public-school transportation, including appeals through speeches about how the issue affects them. Maki Jenkins, a senior at Meadowdale, asked lawmakers to increase funding for public-school transportation during one of those student visits: '[The lawmakers] just told us, 'It takes time,' but they've been saying that for the last decade and a half,' Jenkins notes.
On May 14, Meadowdale students visited the statehouse for a third time to share their experiences about riding the RTA. Over the course of the month, 14 students submitted written testimony to the education committees in the Ohio House and Senate. But, Jenkins says, nothing has changed since his prior visit, which makes him lack faith in the state lawmakers' ability to address these issues. 'We need more people pushing," he says. "The 500 of us at Meadowdale is not enough. It's more than just us who are struggling with transportation — it's in Columbus. It's everywhere.'
In the meantime, the death of Alfred Hale looms large for many students who worry about their safety on buses and at the downtown hub. They're scared, they say, because they don't know what's going to happen next.
Interviews and writing by Cristina Tinsley and Habiba Milemba
Additional reporting and research by Ja'Kiera Guy, Terry Bradfield, and Jesse Hastings
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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