“Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy. The Detroit district began the school year with a $600,000 experiment: Would yellow bus service for high schoolers improve attendance? As the school year wraps up, the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s data suggests it can – with caveats. A pilot program offering yellow bus service at two high schools – Henry Ford High School and East English Village Preparatory Academy at Finney – produced different results. The data indicates the pilot reduced chronic absenteeism for students who live near Henry Ford and frequently rode the bus, administrators said during a board committee meeting last week. The results were inconclusive for East English students, because few students participated, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at the meeting. “As we think about the budget process, I’m comfortable in saying that yellow bus services in a neighborhood school where there’s a larger concentration of students who live in the neighborhood can reduce chronic absences,” said Vitti. The bus rides were only available to students who lived within the feeder pattern of the two high schools. This likely reduced the number of riders at East English Village, Vitti said, because a smaller percentage of its students live near the school. Board Chair LaTrice McClendon said during the meeting the district should also continue to search for transportation fixes for students on the east side, where population density is lower. “That doesn’t mean we don’t still need to provide buses,” she said. “We need to think outside of the box.” The district spent around $600,000 to run four buses twice a day at each of the schools for the entire school year, according to DPSCD. A total of 102 Henry Ford students rode the buses through April 2. Only 29 did at East English Village. Ridership increased significantly at Henry Ford in the winter months, as the district expected. In November, an average of 15 students rode the bus every day . Both schools had higher chronic absenteeism rates in the 2024-25 school year than the DPSCD average – 82% at Henry Ford and 77% at East English Village. The district’s overall rate was 60.9% . Students are considered to be chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of days in a school year, or roughly 18 days of instruction in a typical 180-day school year. City buses are the main mode of transportation for most Detroit high schoolers because DPSCD does not provide yellow bus service to most. Though city bus rides are now free for all Detroit students , service remains unreliable . Some students say it takes them hours to travel to school due to inconsistent schedules and inconvenient routes. Others report feeling unsafe while they wait at bus stops . Yellow bus pilot results varied at the two schools Most high school principals in the district want yellow buses for their students, Vitti said during last week’s committee meeting. “I feel that the Henry Ford pilot can tell us that it’s worth exploring,” Vitti said. “I would not scale at every high school, but it is something to explore maybe at certain schools.” The 59 Henry Ford students who rode buses more than 10 times reduced their chronic absenteeism by 8.5 percentage points so far in 2025-26 compared to the year before, according to DPSCD. The change represented the biggest reduction in chronic absenteeism of all student groups across ten neighborhood high schools, administrators said. The 43 Henry Ford students who rode between one and nine times reduced chronic absenteeism by 7 percentage points, according to DPSCD. The remaining 263 Henry Ford students who were in the boundary for bus pickup but did not ride at all increased their chronic absenteeism rates by 3.8 percentage points, the district said. Another 141 students at Henry Ford were not eligible for rides because they lived too far away, DPSCD data shows. They represented about 27% of students at the school. More than 300 East English Village students who were eligible for rides at the school never participated. Another 266, or 55% of students at the school, did not qualify for rides. Only 18 East English students rode buses more than 10 times. Eleven rode between one and 9 times. Board member Monique Bryant, who rode along on the buses with McClendon a couple of times, said during the meeting many of the East English Village stops were not in areas “conducive for students to walk.” “We saw an overwhelming number of students being dropped off, or they were in vehicles waiting in those areas that were too dark, where there were abandoned houses,” she said. Both Bryant and McClendon had concerns about the district’s data collection around bus riders, saying there were likely more students participating than were captured. In order to continue the pilot or expand it to other schools, a majority of board members must approve the plans. The district has not made any formal proposals to do so. Budget discussions for the 2026-27 school year will begin at next month’s committee meeting. The board must approve a budget by the end of June. Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org .
Original story
Continue reading at Chalkbeat
www.chalkbeat.org
Summary generated from the RSS feed of Chalkbeat. All article rights belong to the original publisher. Click through to read the full piece on www.chalkbeat.org.
