Over the years DPS has experimented with various ways of making sure kids have necessary transportation, including yellow buses, busing contracts, and public transportation (RTA).
Late last year, Meadowdale students on the school paper, the Daily Dale, conducted a poll about their peers’ experiences riding the RTA: Of the 24 respondents, over 60% said they witnessed fights on mass transportation; over 40% reported being exposed to drug use; and one-third indicated they’d been exposed to sexual activity. Nearly 80% reported being late for school because of RTA buses.
“Sometimes the [RTA] buses aren’t even coming at all,” freshman Amir Palmer tells Teen Vogue. “It’s caused me to be late to school sometimes.”
While riding the RTA, Amir says, he has also seen drugs, sexual activity, and violence. “This one man offered me drugs while I was just standing there at the bus stop waiting,” he recalls. It was a cold day, so he thought the man was just breathing out hot air, but then he realized the guy was smoking something. “He was like, ‘Do you want some?’ [I] just walked away because I was scared.”
Other students in the survey mentioned seeing knives and guns on the bus. And two years ago, says junior Ziza Wynn, she was riding to school with another girl a grade above her. A man started harassing the other girl, asking her for her contact information; when the girl said no, he flashed a gun at her.
More recently, Ziza was waiting longer than usual for a bus and decided to walk home, when a man came up to her and asked for her contact information. He “kept following” her, she says.
A similar situation happened to junior Laylah Ichchou, but she says she had friends with her, one of whom started yelling to scare the man away. “[Our friend was like], ‘They’re little kids!’” she continues. “He was following us around the hub.”
Says Laylah, riding the RTA does teach students independence, but she’s still concerned about the safety of teens who have to ride with random adults: “It’s a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t see while we get on the bus.”
To protect students, Lawrence says, the district sends safety and security officers to the downtown hub every afternoon. The district has said that it has spent about $35,000 per month on extra supervision, which, in the past, also covered two local libraries, according to the Dayton Daily News. (Teen Vogue has repeatedly reached out to the RTA for comment, but has not received a response.)
In comments about the school district’s busing model to the Dayton Daily News in April, Greater Dayton RTA CEO Bob Ruzinsky said, “Dayton Public [S]chools are the responsible party. It’s their students, it’s their responsibility to transport their students, and they should be solving this problem.”
Almost immediately after Hale’s death, two Dayton-area state representatives proposed a solution: Ban student transfers at the downtown bus hub. That amendment is still under consideration.
