Nearly 20% of CPS students with disabilities have no bus ride on the first day of school

As Chicago Public Schools deals with a continued bus driver shortage and skyrocketing requests, more than 1,900 disabled Chicago Public Schools students — about 18% of those in need — still don’t have bus service with classes starting on Monday.

District officials are stressing that they have routed more students overall than at the start of school last year, but that the numbers requesting transportation have also increased dramatically. CPS on Friday said as of Aug. 21, nearly 8,800 students with disabilities had been routed, up from 6,800 at this time last year.

The district prioritizes busing for students with disabilities, as well as unhoused students, as required by law. Some 10,695 students with disabilities have requested transportation — an increase of 33% compared to last year, according to the district. The percentage of disabled and unhoused students enrolled in CPS has also been going up.

“The District is dedicated to providing reliable transportation to all eligible students,” the district said in a statement. “Despite challenges like the national driver shortage and varied schedules, we remain focused on getting students to and from school safely and on time.”

That’s little comfort to kids and families left without a ride.

“It is a total mess,” said Terri Roback, a special education advocate. She said she has heard from many parents who are facing busing problems and Facebook pages are full of complaints.

“There are people on there saying they are in tears, crying because they don’t know how they are going to get their children to school. It is a real hardship,” she said.

Roback said some of what parents are being told by caseworkers is illegal.

Margaret Joseph has a profoundly disabled daughter who is blind and in a wheelchair. The 17-year-old senior has taken a bus to school with an aide for years. But last week Joseph received an email from CPS saying they can’t provide transportation this year.

“If you don’t help kids like my daughter, who is disabled, who are they going to help?” Joseph said. “How much more can a person take?”

Both she and her husband work — she is a CPS teacher — and they can’t drive their daughter to school. On Monday, they plan to run home during the work day several times between them to feed and change her daughter, who will be supervised by an older brother.

As was the case last year, some families are being offered $500 a month to transport their children to schools. But this year, the district is limiting this incentive to those it can not otherwise route and who live more than five miles from their placement. It is expecting 1,200 fewer students will qualify.

That means some students and families who live closer to their school and don’t have routes are just out of luck, Roback said.

Other parents said their children were given routes, Roback said but not pick up times, while some were given pick up times after the school day started.

Until April, the state was under state corrective action, which required the district to “make every effort” to keep commute times for students with disabilities to less than an hour. The state imposed the monitoring in fall 2022 when the district admitted about 3,000 students had ride times of over an hour.

Since the pandemic, the school district’s transportation vendors have struggled to attract bus drivers, even as the district gave them money to pay bonuses and increase wages. Though it remains short, CPS said there are about 850 bus drivers through its vendors, a jump from 621 bus drivers last year.

The district also has been advocating to change state testing and certification requirements to make it easier for bus drivers to get credentials.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.