Speed, Visibility, and Compliance for Students Facing Housing Instability

Housing instability is a critical factor contributing to chronic absenteeism, with nearly 48% of students experiencing homelessness nationwide being chronically absent during the 2022–2023 school year. This rate is 22 percentage points higher than their peers.

When students move frequently due to housing instability, transportation truly is educational access. Our internal data shows that riders in foster care or those who qualify for McKinney-Vento transportation had an average of 1.3 unique residential addresses in the last school year. But averages don’t tell the full story. Alarmingly, we have seen students with as many as 14 unique residential addresses in a single school year. For these vulnerable students, every day they spend waiting for their school district to find them a transportation solution is a day of education they never get back. 

For transportation directors, this data highlights why fulfilling McKinney-Vento transportation isn’t just a mandate — it’s a high-stakes race against time. The goal should be simple: First, get the student to school; then, figure out the long-term routing solution. When a student’s living situation changes abruptly, the priority must be solving for the immediate need to ensure they don’t miss a single day of learning.

Transportation policies sometimes inadvertently increase absenteeism by requiring teams to take the time to first verify no traditional bus route is available before considering using a third-party vendor to provide a ride. This “bus-first” verification takes time, and while the logistics are being figured out, the student is sitting at home. When solving for immediate McKinney-Vento mobility needs, transportation teams are too often forced to choose between three flawed options:

• Choosing a broker, which often means waiting days for them to set up the route while the student remains absent

• Relying on taxis that offer speed but provide zero visibility or student-specific safety standards

• Deploying a full-sized, underutilized bus for a single rider just to meet the mandate

HopSkipDrive offers a better way. We eliminate the friction of McKinney-Vento transportation by allowing you to secure reliable rides in as little as six hours. This ensures educational continuity from day one, giving you the breathing room to evaluate long-term options without sacrificing the student’s attendance or safety.

Protecting Educational Continuity for Every Student

Data shows that students experiencing homelessness or in foster care move three or more times a year. When a broker takes three days to set up a new route, that child can needlessly miss nearly 10 days of school annually simply because they are waiting for a ride.

This isn’t just about missed classes; it’s about lost opportunities for learning and missed access to essential meals. With HopSkipDrive, a change in address doesn’t have to mean a gap in attendance. We can fulfill your McKinney-Vento rides within six hours, ensuring no missed school (even the same day), fully protecting student stability — and your district’s compliance record.

We oversee everything directly and transparently, adhering to a higher standard of safety and care. Our direct relationship with CareDrivers allows us to provide continuous oversight over every step of the ride, rather than relying on third-party service providers.

• Operational control and speed mean no missed days of school.
  We remove the administrative delays common in subcontracted models by giving you the tools to manage rides quickly and easily. Our system enables a six-hour turnaround for new rides and just two hours for address changes, ensuring students never miss a day of school due to a move.

• Specialized student support means drivers who are equipped to handle the unique needs of vulnerable riders with empathy, patience, and professional care.
  While taxis and brokers often utilize drivers that don’t have childcare experience, HopSkipDrive CareDrivers are highly qualified caregivers with an average of 10 years of experience. They receive specialized education in trauma-informed care, providing a modern and dignified experience designed specifically to support student well-being.

• Proactive prevention — not reaction — means incidents don’t turn into issues.
  We set a new safety standard by providing direct, real-time insights and intervention. Our proprietary Safe Ride Support^® team uses an enhanced proactive alert system to automatically detect and flag critical events — taking action even before a ride has started to ensure any concerning activity is addressed swiftly.

• Risk-eliminating transparency means less work for your team.
  Through our ride management platform, RideIQ, you can set up a student’s rides for the entire year in less than five minutes — and if a student moves housing, you can update the address across all rides in under two minutes. You maintain complete visibility into every trip, every CareDriver, and every compliance detail, with instant access to the data and reports required for audits and reimbursements.

• Full visibility means peace of mind for your team, your students, their families, and your schools.
  We extend real-time tracking beyond the transportation office. While you can monitor every CareDriver location from a secure dashboard, parents receive mirrored updates on their mobile app and school site staff use the “Daily Queue” to track arrivals, ensuring the student’s entire community stays informed. And our Safe Ride Support team is monitoring everything in real time as well.

Don’t settle for the delays of a broker or the uncertainty of a taxi service. Choose the partner that offers full visibility, vetted caregivers, and the speed required to keep vulnerable students where they belong: in school.

Direct Accountability vs. Fragmented Broker Models

The primary difference you get with HopSkipDrive is direct accountability and flexibility. The success of a transportation plan for students experiencing homelessness depends on the speed and precision of routing adjustments. When a student’s residence changes, any delay in re-establishing transportation results in a lost learning opportunity, increasing your districts’ rates of absenteeism.

A broker model often creates a visibility vacuum where ride requests disappear into a network of unknown third-party service providers. Because brokers work through layers of subcontracted service providers who manage groups of drivers rather than maintaining a direct relationship with them individually, communication is frequently delayed. This fragmentation means it can take over a week to secure a driver for a student, leading to missed school days and non-compliance.

Take Immediate Action for McKinney-Vento Compliance

When transportation is the only thing standing between a student experiencing homelessness and their education, every hour counts. Choose the McKinney-Vento partner that replaces administrative delays with same-day reliability to ensure that housing instability never costs your students another day of learning.