Summer is over for students across the U.S., and parents are back to coordinating schedules around their children’s school day. Getting kids to and from school and activities is another item on parents’ already long to-do lists. For many families, it’s becoming an increasingly difficult challenge, especially as bus driver shortages and route cuts make reliable school transportation increasingly scarce.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and HopSkipDrive partnered this summer to survey parents about their transportation experiences for the 2025 State of School Transportation Report. Between June and July 2025, 838 parents of school-aged children from all 50 states completed the nationally representative survey. The results highlight the daily struggles parents face getting their children to school, and reveal the personal and professional costs of transportation challenges nationwide.
What we found shows just how deeply transportation problems have seeped into family life, affecting everything from job opportunities to student participation in school activities.
Parents Shoulder the Transportation Burden — Especially Working Mothers
As students across America return to classrooms this fall, more families are personally handling the responsibility of getting kids to school. The 2025 State of School Transportation survey reveals that 77% of families rely on cars to get their children to and from school. Among these families, 63% of parents personally handle the daily school run — and for the majority (61%) it’s a dedicated trip.
The impact on working mothers has been particularly severe. Women are far more likely than men to handle school transportation duties, with 68% of mothers driving their children themselves compared to 57% of fathers. These transportation duties have a professional cost. Overall, 35% of parents report they have missed work due to school transportation needs. Almost one-third (29%) have been prevented from taking work opportunities, and 11% have lost jobs entirely. “My husband had to leave work to provide transportation just so she could make [it to] the test,” one Clay County, Florida, parent told News4JAX after her daughter’s bus failed to arrive on time for a college entrance exam.
For mothers without college degrees, the situation is even more dire. Around 20% report losing employment as the result of their transportation responsibilities, which is 10 times the rate of college-educated mothers.
The daily stress of managing transportation compounds these professional impacts. More than half of parents (56%) experience stress about their children’s transportation at least a few times per year, with a quarter feeling this pressure monthly. The chaos is palpable in school pickup and drop-off lanes, where 70% of parents report traffic congestion problems. In Lake Jackson, Texas, Planning Commission meetings recently focused on school-related traffic backups after parents caused vehicle stacks at intersections, blocking lanes during pickup times.
Parents are adapting, but the cost is steep. A quarter of families face roundtrip commutes of 30 minutes or longer. And the impact extends beyond family schedules and career decisions, to students themselves.
Students Lose Learning Opportunities Due to Transportation Gaps
Transportation disruptions affect multiple aspects of a student’s school experience. Nearly half of students (44%) have been late to school at least a few times in the past year due to transportation issues. In Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, the situation reached a breaking point when the school district had to cancel classes entirely at two schools due to bus driver shortages.
The financial and logistical challenges facing school districts are causing them to make difficult decisions that directly affect families. In Massachusetts, Saugus Public School District eliminated waitlists for bus service without notifying parents, leaving families to discover the change on their own. “We just found out by word of mouth, which was kind of disappointing,” parent Fabiola Machado told Boston 25 News. She now has one child who can ride the bus and another who cannot, forcing her to arrange carpools and pay for private transportation.
Transportation barriers also prevent students from accessing critical educational support services. Twenty-one percent of parents surveyed indicate their children missed essential school services like school meals or counseling due to transportation issues, while 17% missed tutoring or academic help. And more than a quarter of students (26%) missed extracurricular activities.
For families where children don’t participate in after-school programs at all, transportation is a huge factor: 37% cite the lack of available transportation as a major reason their children can’t join activities.
How students get to school also affects how often they’re late. Half of parents whose children primarily take the school bus report they are late at least a few times per year, compared to 39% of parents whose children use other forms of transportation. This timeliness gap impacts attendance and highlights how transportation access is associated with differences in educational opportunities for students.
Unequal Transportation Access Creates Disparity
The data reveals sharp divides in how families experience school transportation, with race and income creating vastly different school commute realities.
The most stark disparity emerges around school bus safety. While roughly one in three parents across all racial groups say buses aren’t available in their area, non-white parents are more than twice as likely as white parents to avoid buses due to safety concerns — 20% versus just 8%. This gap based on safety concerns forces families who might otherwise rely on free school transportation to find alternatives.
Transportation access also limits families’ educational options in other ways. When parents can select any school in their area, 78% consider transportation at least somewhat important in their decision. This importance varies dramatically by income: 63% of families earning under $30,000 annually call transportation extremely or very important, compared to just 41% of families earning over $100,000. This means transportation logistics play a major in influencing where lower-income children attend school.
These disparities extend to how families view potential solutions. Non-white parents are much more likely than white parents to see transportation barriers as limiting their access to school services (56% versus 40%). Lower-income families also report greater constraints on activities and school choice due to transportation limitations, revealing how current systems create unequal access to opportunities.
The backup options available to families reveal how precarious the system really is. Half of parents say they would adjust their family schedule or ask friends and family for help — strategies that work only if you have flexible employment or strong social networks. Less than 1 in 10 would use public transportation, hire childcare, or switch to hired car services, highlighting how few realistic alternatives exist for most families.
The result: A tiered system where transportation capacity strongly impacts educational access.
Parents Want Better Transportation Options
The appetite for better transportation runs deep among families. More than half of parents (53%) say they would enroll their children in additional activities if transportation were easier, and nearly half (48%) would sign up for more school services. About 30% would even consider sending their children to a different school if transportation options improved.
Some districts are trying creative approaches. Susquehanna Township School District in Pennsylvania is considering paying parents $50 per student per month, up to $1,000 per school year, to transport students due to ongoing bus driver shortages. While this approach acknowledges that families are already filling transportation gaps, it still places the burden on parents rather than providing professional alternatives.
Other districts are pushing for policy changes to expand their options. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, 44 superintendents signed a letter asking state legislators to allow 15-seat vans for extracurricular activities instead of requiring full-size buses. For smaller districts, running nearly empty buses for activities strains the budget while limiting opportunities for students.
(For more on how school administrators are responding to transportation challenges, read 5 Key Insights on the State of School Transportation Today.)
Parents, too, are advocating for new school transportation solutions. A Chicago Public Schools parent whose children lost transportation through the district in 2023 recently wrote an op-ed for The Chicago Tribune in support of HB 989 — a bill that would allow participating school districts to contract with vetted, third-party transportation solutions like HopSkipDrive.
“The current transportation model is broken, and until we embrace alternative options to supplement traditional school bus routes, thousands of local kids will continue to be at a disadvantage.”
—Paul Wargaski, parent of Chicago Public Schools students
When it comes to safety, parents show clear preferences for different types of transportation. While 78% consider school buses safe, only 43% actually use them. More than 6 out of 10 parents (63%) consider supplemental transportation like HopSkipDrive safe, compared to those who feel comfortable with their children getting to school by walking or biking (33%), using public transit (32%), or riding with a hired car service like a taxi, Uber, or Lyft (28%).
When presented with potential improvements, 40% of parents say supplemental transportation services would help their families — indicating substantial interest in school-arranged alternatives to traditional bus service.
The HopSkipDrive Solution
These survey findings highlight exactly why supplemental transportation solutions like HopSkipDrive exist. When schools can’t provide reliable transportation for all students, HopSkipDrive offers another option, especially for vulnerable populations that may not have access to a personal vehicle or whose unique needs can’t easily be met with a school bus: CareDrivers with extensive background checks and at least five years of caregiving experience, real-time ride tracking through mobile apps, and a six-hour turnaround for last-minute changes.
It’s a solution that’s a win-win for everyone. Schools get a partner that offers supplementary support where and when it’s needed. Students get personalized, care-based service that offers routine and stability. And parents get the safety and reliability they need without having to coordinate carpools or miss work to get their kids to school.
Get more data and insights on how transportation issues are affecting families across the country by downloading a copy of the full 2025 State of School Transportation Report now.
