What types of transportation do you and your family use during an average week, and how has this shaped your view of transportation policy for schools?

My husband and I have a car, which he uses. I walk or take public transportation almost everywhere. I would bike more, but I don’t feel like it’s very safe. My experiences lead me to believe that reliable public transportation is very important–many, probably most high school students use the CTA to get to school. I don’t see a lot of high school students biking and many of them travel quite far and go home after dark which makes biking less appealing, but I do see elementary school families biking. Quite a few elementary schools are located in busy areas and I think that makes it more challenging for parents to feel like biking is safe. If it were safer that might be a more popular option.

What are some of the transportation challenges that families and students face in your district?

The biggest transportation challenge in my district relates to busing. There aren’t enough bus drivers and routes have been inadequately planned, meaning families who need bus transportation don’t have access to it. Well into the year, there were still not enough buses for students with disabilities to have rides or rides shorter than 1 hour, as is required. Students attending magnet or selective enrollment schools still lack buses, which affects a number of families and a number of schools in our district. Additionally, I have heard from parents that at times there is a lack of crossing guards at elementary schools and safety concerns about busy streets.

School pick up/drop off can be chaotic and at times unsafe. What are ways you think this could be improved?

The mixing of parents in cars picking up and dropping off their children with families arriving and departing on foot or bicycle contributes to a lot of the chaos and safety issues during these times. I have been to all of the elementary schools and see that in many cases they have planned for this and use cones and barriers to block off streets or portions of streets to designate certain areas for cars or to be car-free. In all cases, they have had personnel stationed outside to assist with drop off and pick up to help make it safer. I was at one school that had somewhat different exit times and places for different grade levels, and this was also helpful in limiting the chaos. Providing non-car transportation options and supporting those can help to reduce the amount of mixing between these two types of transportation and make the situation safer for everyone. Ensuring that for schools with busier streets, the entrance and exit areas are not on those streets is important, and the use of speed humps to make sure no cars are moving fast near a school is helpful also.

Studies show that childhood independence is critical for individual development. How can Chicago Public Schools better empower families to allow their children to be able to navigate independently – and most importantly, safely – to and from school?

There are really two parts to the safety issue here. One relates to safe transportation. Is the area walkable or bikeable, and if not sufficiently, how can we make it moreso? Can we include bike safety in the physical education curriculum and incentivize biking through bike related activities and providing bikes and helmets for students who don’t have them? Can we use bike buses or walking school buses to encourage more biking and walking? Can we ensure that areas near schools have bike lanes? The second issue was more my concern as a parent and that is stranger danger. My solution as a parent was to have my daughter meet a friend to walk to school and then walk home with that friend. Walking school buses could provide that same kind of safety in numbers. I do want to say that having been to every school, there is a great deal to be said for schools in which parents are present, connecting with each other, having opportunities to be involved in school activities. We want our schools to be like families and having actual families present contributes to that. I would support a plan that encourages independence but also values the regular presence of parents.

Most CPS students are offered driver's education when the time comes, but few are given the opportunity to learn about alternatives. What kind of educational opportunities around transportation do you think students should have?

Giving students access to other forms of transportation and providing the infrastructure needed to support that is the best education for alternatives we can provide. Having comfort and experience with biking, public transportation, or even feeling safe walking in their neighborhood, will let students form transportation habits separate from driving before they’re old enough for driver’s education. Then, including education about the impacts of different forms of transportation on the environment, both in terms of climate change but also in terms of city design and neighborhood development, will allow them to critically engage with the big picture around their transportation choices.

Increasingly, a lack of busing has become a serious burden for many families’ day-to-day lives as services continue to be cut. What are some short-term and long-term solutions that you think would address this?

We should be using some common sense approaches to improving busing. CPS Parents for Buses offered a number of different ideas, working from a premise that solving the problem for some students was better than not solving it for any and that problem solving should start with the lowest-income students. Their solutions included increasing the number of drivers by offering a competitive wage and removing irrelevant qualifications from the licensing requirements. This year, CPS changed a number of start times and is picking up students at hubs, but they do not expect this to completely solve the problem. When groups, especially parent groups, have worked on solutions to a problem and want to collaborate, that deserves a response. If we are to restore trust in CPS, we have to be a Board that is willing to listen to and work with the public.

For many years now, Chicago Public Schools has failed to meet federally mandated requirements for accessible transportation for students with disabilities. How do you envision ensuring that students with disabilities’ transportation needs are met?

The fact that so many students with disabilities are still not receiving the busing services they are legally entitled to is cause for concern, especially because this has become an annual problem. CPS must get in front of it. Improving the overall busing support as I described above will certainly help students with disabilities as well. Additionally, we must ensure that the buses and the school infrastructure are equipped to support students with disabilities, and that the new bus drivers we hire have the right training they need to support these students. A number of students at the school I just retired from could not attend school on days with temperatures above 75 degrees because the buses had no air conditioning and their health was too fragile. There is also a need for bus aides to support students with disabilities and that can be a challenge because the hours are so limited and the pay is low. So finding other paid work that supports the school and students for the hours in between drop off and pick up may be a help.