A single mom copes with Syracuse’s school bus fiasco: a $17 Lyft, a 2-mile walk to work, frustration

Missing school because Syracuse City School busses don't show up

Juanita Holland and her daughter, Jakilah, who is 10 and in sixth grade, talk about her Syracuse City school bus being extremely late and sometimes not showing up at all at their home, Syracuse, N.Y., Wednesday Sept. 22, 2021. Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Juanita Holland made a promise to her 10-year-old daughter, Jakilah, on Tuesday.

“I told her I’m going to get her to school, no matter what,” Holland said.

Jakilah, a sixth-grader at Frazer School in the Syracuse district, had to spend the day at home because the school bus never came. It was the second day she’s missed this year because the bus didn’t show up and her mom doesn’t have another way to get her there. The family relies on public transportation.

On every day but the first day of school, the bus was at least two hours late or hasn’t come at all. The first day of school, the bus was only an hour late, Holland said. Her brother was able to give her daughter a ride a few of the days, but he had to work Tuesday and Wednesday.

So when Holland got the automated call that the school bus was expected to be more than two hours late again Wednesday, she made good on her promise. She called a Lyft.

She spent $16.99 on the ride service and rode across the city, from the family’s home in the Valley neighborhood to Frazer School on the West Side, with Jakilah.

After dropping Jakilah and apologizing that the child was late, Holland had to walk nearly 2 miles to her job working customer service at Macy’s. She couldn’t afford to call another Lyft to get to the job where she makes $17.10 an hour.

Hundreds of families in the Syracuse school district have been struggling with unpredictable, unreliable buses. The city school district, which serves more than 20,000 students across 33 schools, spends $21 million on transportation to bus 15,000 students. Most of them ride the yellow First Student school buses; Centro provides buses for many of the high school students.

First Student and Centro, along with other school districts, have been slammed by a statewide shortage of bus drivers. The district cut 30 routes – from 190 to 160, said district spokesman Michael Henesey. He said roughly 75 percent of the buses are late, on average, and about 15 a day are more than an hour late every day. He could not provide details on how many students were late to school each day. “But it is fair to say a lot,” Henesey said.

He did not have information on how many students, like Jakilah, did not make it to school at all.

Superintendent Jaime Alicea said last week he was working on the problem with First Student. On Wednesday, parents received a robocall from Alicea, telling them he was aware of the severity of the problem. He instructed them to call their child’s school for more assistance, but didn’t say what else would be done for them.

Jakilah Holland’s experience underscores what’s at stake.

To families who have no car, a late bus or a bus that doesn’t show isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s the domino that can knock all the other ones down. Nearly half of the children who live in the city live in poverty, many in single-parent families. They often rely on public transportation. They cannot afford to pay for some way around the district’s failure to provide a basic service.

On Wednesday, Holland had to clock into her job by 9:45 a.m. She was opening the customer service desk. She usually takes the Centro bus there.

But if she decides to wait for her daughter’s bus when she gets the call at 7:30 that the bus will be two hours late, she cannot make it to work on time.

And then what if, after all the waiting, the bus does not even come?

“Do I miss work to get her to school, or do I be late to work so I can get her to school? Do I pick and choose every single day. That’s not fair,” Holland said. If she misses work, it comes out of her sick time. She has about 20 hours left for the year.

On Tuesday, Jakilah didn’t say much when the bus didn’t show.

“She was disappointed,” her mother said. “She loves school; she really does.”

Jakilah’s favorite subject is math. And she loves it when she has art at the end of the day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she gets speech therapy at school. She missed that this week when the bus didn’t come.

On Wednesday night Jakilah sat on her porch with her mother. Her thoughtful brown eyes looked to the street corner. That’s where she and her grandmother have waited and waited every morning, she explained. They watch other buses go by, but not hers.

“I’m pretty mad about it,” she said.

Her grandmother, who lives with the family, often stands with her. But she only has until 8:39. That’s when she has to catch the Centro bus at the other corner so she can get to her job.

By then, Jakilah’s school bus is over an hour late. Her school has already started.

Taking Centro isn’t an option, either, Holland said. It’s a two-bus trip, but one of the buses got cut when Centro scaled back its service.

Holland said she has called the transportation office more times than she can count. She told the school she was having problems with the buses. They told her there was nothing they could do and told her to try transportation again.

On Monday, she finally reached someone who told her they would work on fixing it, she said. But then the bus didn’t come at all on Tuesday.

As Holland walked nearly 2 miles from Jakilah’s school to her job at the mall, she called the transportation office over and over again.

No one picked up.

Marnie Eisenstadt writes about people, public affairs and the Syracuse City School District. Contact her anytime email | Twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246.

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