COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Columbus City Schools are legally required to provide transportation for charter and private school students who live within the boundaries of CCS, but the district’s board of education passed a resolution Tuesday that included exceptions.
The resolution stated students can be declared “transportation impractical” based on six factors, like how far a student lives from their school and how many students need to be bussed. If a student is declared impractical, the district will not be providing transportation for that student this school year.
It’s a service many rely on; families said they are now left scrambling and charter and private school leaders are frustrated.
“The information they are sharing with families is riddled with errors, it is coming late and it’s very hard to understand what’s being communicated by the district and it’s happening in the 11th hour so our families are required to scramble,” said Andy Boy, the founder and CEO of United Schools Network, which operates a few charter schools in Columbus.
Boy said over 60 of his students don’t have a reliable way to get to school now. He also said families were only notified about this change at the beginning of August.
“To wait until two weeks, a week before school started is just unacceptable,” Boy said. “It is a betrayal of what they are supposed to be doing and our families are the ones that are going to lose.”
Sina Draughn said she has three grandkids at Boy’s charter schools in Columbus and the transportation from CCS is vital for her family. In previous years, all of her grandkids were bussed to school by the district and she said she doesn’t understand why this year is different.
“At her bus stop, it was three kids at that bus stop,” Draughn said. “Two of those kids went to high school, so now it’s just her as a 7th grader at that stop. So, now she’s impractical.”
Boy said getting students to school is the number one priority, so United Schools has hired a private transportation company to pick up the kids for the time being. He said footing the bill for this has been tough.
“It certainly is difficult for us to use funding that could be used to support our students in other ways for this purpose,” Boy said.
Families are allowed to request mediation from CCS, and at that point, the district said it will either have to transport the student if it has the means or it’ll pay families since it did not provide bussing.
Parents are also able to challenge the declaration of impracticality and then the district will see if the student truly does meet five of the six factors to be considered impractical.
For more information on charter and private school transportation from CCS, click here.