The ripple effects of how – and if – kids are able to commute safely to school

This article is part of a limited series exploring the history, current policies, and intersections between school boundaries and feeder patterns in DC’s public schools and land use, housing, and transportation issues. Read Part I, Part II, and Part IV. And then learn more by tuning into the series’ companion webinar, moderated by journalist Abigail Higgins.

School boundaries reflect DC’s segregated history and many aspects of urban inequality today, including housing and education — but in any discussion of school boundaries, it’s vital to keep in mind that only about a quarter of the city’s students attend their in-boundary school.

All of DC’s approximately 100,000 public school students are guaranteed a spot at their neighborhood school, assigned to them based on the school boundaries they live in (lines last redrawn in 2014 and before that in 1968) and what feeder pattern they’re a part of — the middle school and then high school they’re directed into based on their elementary school. However, about 25,000 participate in the My School DC lottery. In this system, families rank their top 12 choices before an algorithm assigns them to a school. It means students have access to specialized programs (such as language immersion or extracurricular activities) but also that students may have longer commutes. What that journey looks like and whether they can take full advantage of their school options has a lot to do with transportation equity.

“We like to talk about choice but the reality is that if you can’t get to those choices, then it’s not really a choice,” said at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson.

On average, students commute just over two miles to and from school, with about 42% of students leaving their ward. This number varies, however, depending on students’ age and location. Commutes increase, for example, for students in Ward 7 and 8, who travel about three miles. High school students also tend to have longer commutes than younger students, in part because they’re more likely to go to an out-of-boundary school than their elementary school counterparts.

A 2018 report by the Urban Institute found that 43% of DC students drive or are driven to school (23% take public transit) and that having a car significantly increases the number of schools a family can consider. Fifty-one percent of households in the highest-poverty tracts do not have a car in Washington, DC, (relative to 21 percent for low-poverty tracts), according to the report.

According to the report, a commute that takes ten minutes by car is more than doubled by public transportation, which takes about 23 minutes (still much lower, however, than cities like Detroit or New Orleans where that 10-minute commute stretches to over 30 minutes by public transport).

DCPS did not respond to requests for comment.

A safe commute for all

While the longer commute faced by students in Ward 7 and 8 is at least in part a result of the neighborhoods’ geographic isolation, it’s far from the only hurdle these students face.

Research by the DC Policy Center found that in 2021 almost 80% of people lived within half a mile of a homicide (which are on the rise in DC) occurring that year. Black residents, however, are 19 percentage points more likely than their white peers to live within that radius.

Unfortunately, that disparity widens for children: 89% of children of color and 57% of white children live within a half mile of a 2021 homicide, with a particularly high concentration East of the Anacostia River. Experiencing this kind of neighborhood violence often means that kids don’t feel safe commuting to school, which can have a serious impact on their mental health and educational outcomes.

“You’re kind of seeing this overlap where a lot of homicides are occurring where a lot of kids live, which contributes to a general feeling of anxiety and your community being affected by these trends,” said Chelsea Coffin, director of the Education Policy Initiative at DC Policy Center.

Whether or not students feel safe can also be exacerbated by what it’s like to be a pedestrian where they live. Neighborhoods with lower car ownership tend to have high rates of pedestrians struck by drivers, with high rates of ownership concentrated in the city’s Northwest quadrant and high rates of traffic fatalities concentrated in the Southeast.

Furthermore, so many students relying on cars to get to school increases traffic congestion in neighborhoods where schools are located, potentially exacerbating the risks to students commuting on foot.

These factors don’t just affect how students feel about getting to school, advocates say; it may be affecting whether they’re getting to school at all.

Chronic absenteeism

Many teachers have fingered unreliable transportation as the primary culprit for the city’s problem with chronic absenteeism, according to reporting by WAMU/DCist. It’s an issue DC struggled with well before the pandemic’s disruptions. In the 2018-19 school year, 30% of students were missing 10% or more of the academic calendar — a number that jumps to 50% in high school. Those rates increase even further for poor students.

It’s an issue that negatively affects students at every age, contributing to everything from poorer reading and social skills for early elementary school students, to a correlation with high school dropout rates for middle schoolers.

In 2018, charter school representatives testified in front of the DC Council that transportation was the biggest reason kids weren’t attending school regularly.

It’s a problem the city is working to address, in part through the innovative Kids Ride Free program under which all students who attend school in Washington DC — be it public, private, or charter schools — can ride public transportation without cost. For traditional public schools, this is provided instead of a typical yellow bus.

In 2019-2020, 58% of students had Kids Ride Free cards, meaning that over 40% either don’t want the free transit cards or are having trouble accessing them. This might be because kids are too young to use them or because they have reliable private transportation — but it’s also possible some families are struggling to take advantage of the program. In 2021, when most students moved to virtual learning, participation in the program plummeted. For the last school year, use only rebounded somewhat, with about 38% of students taking advantage (public transportation ridership in DC in general is climbing but hasn’t rebounded to pre-pandemic levels).

“I don’t know if that’s due to logistical details, like preferences shifting away from public transit or maybe more students preferring to go to school closer to home after the pandemic,” said Coffin, who adds that an important area for future research is figuring out which students who were using Kids Ride Free before the pandemic aren’t using the program now.

“How can we support students who need these cards and need them to get to school, and can we lessen the burden of transit for their families if they are paying or using significant resources?” said Coffin.

One problem, according to reporting by DCist/WAMU, is that while kids can ride free, their parents might not be able to. Some advocates say that the program leaves a huge gap for parents of young children who either can’t afford to access public transportation or who don’t have the time to chaperone their kids as a result of work schedules or other caretaking duties — especially for families in neighborhoods facing high rates of traffic fatalities or violence.

Some pilot programs have experimented with providing shuttles, gas money, or transportation vouchers to at-risk families to help kids get to school. Some programs provide SmarTrip cards to parents so they can accompany kids to school.

DC’s lottery system opens up a variety of choices to students in DC — choices that can help disrupt the ways that school boundaries and housing segregation continue to perpetuate the inequity set in motion by historical practices such as redlining and legally mandated school segregation. Whether school choice can deliver on its full potential, however, depends upon whether students have the resources they need to take advantage of those choices safely — and that includes how they get to school.

This article is part of a limited series made possible with a grant from Education Forward DC. Greater Greater Washington’s editorial department maintains editorial control and independence in accordance with our editorial policy. Our journalists follow the ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that only 21% of low-income residents in DC have a car, while just over half of households in DC’s wealthiest neighborhood have a car. The report actually states that 51% of households in the highest poverty tracts in DC do not own a car, while 21% of households in low-poverty areas in DC do not own cars. The article has been updated to reflect this change.