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The Detroit school district began offering yellow bus service to students at two high schools this year in an effort to improve attendance. But three months into the school year, few students are hopping on the buses.
At the start of the year, about five high schoolers were riding each of the eight buses in the pilot program, despite efforts by the Detroit Public Schools Community District to notify students and families of the new option, officials said during a community meeting this month. On average, 15 students now ride on each bus every day.
The district is investigating ways to increase ridership, Machion Jackson, a deputy superintendent overseeing transportation, said during the meeting. Colder weather in the coming months and potential adjustments to bus stops draw more students, she said.
“We have significantly increased ridership, and we’re hoping to (continue) to do so,” she said.
DPSCD officials did not respond to requests about the cost of bus pilot or answer questions related to the program.
The pilot program began as an experiment to improve attendance at two schools with high rates of chronic absenteeism. Officials chose Henry Ford High School and East English Village Preparatory Academy at Finney, which had absence rates of 82% and 77% respectively in the 2024-25 school year.
The district’s overall rate was 60.9%.
Students are considered to be chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of days in a school year.
Currently, the district does not provide yellow bus service to most high school students. Exceptions are made in some cases, including for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Around 1,400 high schoolers rode yellow buses so far this school year, according to numbers presented at the community meeting.
City buses are the main mode of transportation for most Detroit high schoolers. So far this school year, more than 3,780 high schoolers got free city bus passes from DPSCD.
Small vehicle transportation, passenger van rides, and gas card reimbursements from the district also help get kids to school.
Why aren’t more students riding yellow buses?
Both Henry Ford and East English enrolled more than 600 students in 2024-25, meaning an average of around 10% of students at each school are riding the pilot buses each day.
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at a board meeting last month the pilot is “not having a scaled impact” on chronic absenteeism at either school. There may be a positive effect on attendance for individual students, he added.
The district has offered student incentives to boost ridership on the pilot buses.
The pilot is plugged during daily announcements in the schools, through lunchtime engagement sessions, and robocalls to parents.
The four pilot buses make between 35 and 42 stops on their routes, Jackson said.
“We chose the stops based on kind of like a heat map,” she said. “We looked at the density of where the majority of the students who attend those schools live in a neighborhood feeder pattern where they lived, and we strategically placed stops so that those students would not have to walk far.”
Anthony Peete, a student representative on the board who attends Henry Ford, said last month that his classmates don’t find the yellow buses convenient.
Some students said they had to walk farther to the yellow bus stop than for the city bus. Others didn’t know how to check where the bus route went, he said.
Vitti said the district should look at ridership numbers again in January and consider whether the pilot should continue.
The district could expand transportation services with additional state funding that was not anticipated in the district’s adopted budget, Vitti said, adding that he would recommend paying for ride shares for small groups of students rather than adding more yellow buses.
The district allocated more than $57.2 million for transportation in its budget for 2025-26 – an increase of nearly $5 million compared to the year before.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
