The school board at Oak Park and River Forest High School last week unanimously approved applying for a mass transit exclusion waiver from the state allowing the school not to provide bus service to students who would otherwise qualify for it. The vote came despite the concerns expressed by many, including more than 300 people who signed a Change.org petition asking the school board not to approve the waiver, and to instead provide bus transportation to students who qualify for it.
The state school code requires school districts to offer free bus transportation to students living 1.5 miles or more away from their school and those living closer than that whose route to school involves severe safety hazards. But OPRF has apparently never, at least within recent memory, provided bus transportation to and from school for general education students. The school qualifies for the mass transit exclusion waiver because of the availability of PACE bus service in Oak Park and River Forest as well as Green Line CTA service.
But a group of parents say the PACE service is unreliable with buses often late or not showing up at all. Some parents say that they end up having to drive their children to school.
Marie Hale, whose home in far northwest River Forest near Thatcher and North Avenue is about three miles away from OPRF, says that she has had to drive her freshman daughter to OPRF in the morning and pick her up after school. Hale was disappointed with the board’s vote.
“I think it’s incredibly tone deaf to the parents that have been begging for help and even going out to start and sign petitions,” Hale said in a telephone interview with Wednesday Journal.
Hale said if other school districts can find the money to provide bus service to students who qualify for it, she didn’t see why OPRF could not do the same.
Before the vote Anthony Arbogast, the school’s business services chief, told the school board that it would cost OPRF somewhere between $2.5 and $6 million annually to provide bus service to the 1,500 or so OPRF students who would qualify for it. Arbogast also said it could require 40 to 60 buses and that he had doubts about the quality of the service that could be provided noting that many school districts are having problems with their bus companies because of a shortage of bus drivers.
“Year one, especially, would be rough,” Arbogast said.
Arbogast said he would find the money if he was confident that effective and timely bus service could be provided but he had grave doubts about that.
“This is a really tough market to feel confident in,” Arbogast said.
School board members said they sympathized with the issues some students have with getting to school but suggested less drastic measures than providing bus service.
“All of us are sensitive to families having transportation problems getting their kids to school,” said board member Graham Brisben.
But Brisben said it would be more efficient to pressure PACE to improve its service. Brisben suggested enlisting local politicians to pressure PACE to improve its performance.
Board member Tim Brandhorst, who lives in central River Forest, said students having the most trouble getting to school seem to live in northwest River Forest and southeast Oak Park. Brandhorst wondered whether the school could do more to put families who live farthest from the school in touch with other close by families to facilitate carpooling. Brandhorst even mused about providing limited bus service to those particular areas farthest from the school. But Arbogast said providing bus service to some but not all who qualify for it would affect state reimbursement and said the school’s lawyers told him that providing limited bus service could open to school to a lawsuit alleging unfair treatment.
“It creates issues of equity and accessibility,” Arbogast said.
Jonathan Livingston suggested doing more to encourage biking to school, mentioning the possibility of creating bike corridors and increasing bicycle storage at the school.
Oak Park Elementary School District 97 provides bus transportation to and from all of its 10 schools. D97 spokeswoman Amanda Siegfried said that 1,154, or about 20% of D97 students, qualify for bus service.
Some, but not a lot, OPRF students drive to school although OPRF, unlike many suburban high schools, does not have a student parking lot.
OPRF issues 140 parking permits to students at an annual cost of $240 per permit allowing students to park on some nearby streets. Some older students also drive and park without a permit on Chicago Avenue or on other streets farther away from the school.