Bus Doesn’t Stop for All / Richmond Parents Whose Kids Attend Schools Outside Their Zone Face Tough Choice

By OLYMPIA MEOLA

An hour after Halimah Benson finished her overnight job, she’s standing in the front yard of her Montrose Heights home.

Her four children and her brother’s three kids are squirreling around and swinging backpacks, waiting for a ride to Richmond’s Bellevue Elementary School.

Last year, Benson’s children rode a school bus to Bellevue, which is one of eight city elementary schools that accepts students from outside its neighborhood attendance zone. Parents such as Benson use the open-enrollment option to move their children to schools they prefer.

But the School Board axed out-of-zone busing from this year’s budget to save an estimated $625,600, a cost-cutting measure included in a city audit of the school operations. On paper, cutting bus drivers and streamlining routes looked good.

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Now, two weeks into the school year, administrators say they are trying to make the new system work while hearing unsettling accounts of what parents are doing to get their children to school – including one parent who put her South Richmond fifth-grader on a city bus to get to a school north of the James River.

“If we are going to follow the auditor’s recommendations, you are not going to get the same level of services,” said school system spokeswoman Felicia Cosby. “The administration is trying to balance it – create the cost savings but balance what’s good for students.”

Nine city schools – eight elementary and one middle – accept applications from students not ordinarily assigned to them if they have extra spots. By spring, when the School Board cut transportation for those students, they had already been accepted to the out-of-zone schools.

Parents had two options – provide their own transportation or switch their child to their home school, in which case the student would receive bus service.

The Bensons made it work.

From their front yard one morning last week, the Bensons watched school buses come and go – just not for their children.

A school bus for Richmond’s Chimborazo Elementary School passed with a handful of children inside. Benson’s neighbor had already caught a school bus to Thomas Jefferson High School.

Even a Henrico County school bus picked up children just yards from Benson’s house, which sits near the county line.

Another Richmond school bus stopped just after 8:30 a.m. at Benson’s house to pick up her preschooler. Minutes later, Benson packed the six remaining children into a green minivan and weaved through the neighborhood to Bellevue on Church Hill.

Her third-grader, A.J., has been at Bellevue since preschool, even though his home school is Chimborazo.

“I’m going to have to do this all year,” she said about driving the children. “My kids shouldn’t have to switch. [A.J.'s] used to it. He’s used to the routine.”

Benson is doing all she can to avoid sending her children to Chimborazo, which draws from some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, including parts of Church Hill and the Fulton area.

“I made better choices so that I wouldn’t have to live in the projects,” she said. “I don’t want my kids exposed to it. I am trying to give them the best that I can.”

Donna Patterson, a working single mother of two sets of twins, will this week put her 10-year-old sons Deshawn and Teshawn on a GRTC bus to Bellevue, which they have attended since preschool. She still struggles with the decision.

“They’re black, they’re males and I want to make sure they get the best education possible,” she said. “I have to do what I have to do to make sure they get the best start. These years will make or break them.”

When school started, Patterson used her two weeks of vacation to find a way to get the boys to school safely. The GRTC bus was her best option, as it is for another Bellevue mother who said she rides the GRTC bus to school with her daughter every morning.

A few days last week, Patterson climbed aboard a city bus with her boys as they got acclimated to the routine. At Bellevue’s back- to-school night this week, she asked school officials whether students could receive discount bus passes.

“If I had to choose between them getting an education or me having a job, they come first,” she said.

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Richmond’s City Council of PTAs is keeping an eye on the situation and plans to become more involved, said Tichi Pinkney Eppes, the council’s president.

“We should not be putting parents in a situation like that,” she said. “Getting children an education shouldn’t be a hardship for parents.”

To further confuse the situation, some neighborhood schools have to offer students the choice to go elsewhere because the schools did not meet academic benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Those students must still be bused, but that service is funded by the federal government. Richmond must also bus some special- education students and foster children to different schools.

“There are a lot of constraints put on the fewer buses that we have,” said Marcia Hathaway, with Richmond schools’ pupil placement program.

When the School Board trimmed the busing services, it also cut 45 bus-driver positions and created express routes for programs that draw students from across the city, such as the International Baccalaureate schools. This year, those students may have to walk up to three-quarters of a mile to a bus stop. Last year, the maximum distance for each student was a half-mile. The express routes are longer, with fewer stops.

Vincent Ashley, with the Richmond schools’ transportation department, said his office plans to ask for more drivers to improve service. Currently, there are 133 contracted positions.

School officials stress that the district has been accommodating for years in offering the open-enrollment choices and transportation, and they still want to offer the flexibility.

If the transportation situation stays the same, Hathaway thinks fewer students will apply for open-enrollment spots.

“A great portion of parents cannot get those students across town,” she said. “And it’s just not safe . . . to put a fifth- grader on a bus from South Side and [then] walk a distance to get to another school.”

“That’s not a safe scenario for any child.”

At John B. Cary Elementary School, another open-enrollment school, Principal Brenda Phillips said a few parents switched to their home schools this year because of the transportation change. Most parents, she said, found transportation, and enrollment has stayed roughly the same as last year.

Cary already had before- and after-school programs, she said. For some parents, those programs can offer a cushion for drop-off and pickup times, but at least one after-school program carries a waiting list.

J.B. Fisher Elementary School parents worked on carpooling, said Richmond School Board Chairman George P. Braxton II.

Braxton said the board kept the out-of-zone school choice as a privilege that parents could take advantage of. Cutting the transportation piece led to savings in the budget, but Braxton acknowledges it has caused stress for some parents.

“We need to make sure that they adjust, and we can hopefully help them some way get to something that can work for everyone,” he said.

At issue: Some Richmond parents are struggling to get their children to school because the city decided to cut out-of-zone busing. For many, the out-of-zone schools provide the best educational opportunities.

Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola@timesdispatch.com.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

Originally published by Times-Dispatch Staff Writer.

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