Chicago (AP) – When Elizabeth Rivera’s phone rings during an overnight shift, it usually does not normally. The bus did not appear Again, one of her three children had to ride in school.
She left early from work at Amazon warehouses in the Houston area, and Rivera was devastated when she was fired, but was not surprised.
“Now I’m a little depressed about it,” Rivera said. “I am depressed because of the simple fact that it is difficult to find a job.
According to a new poll conducted by Rivera is far from the only parents who have been forced to choose their job and their children’s education. Associated Press-NORC Civil Service Research Center Hopskipdrive is a company that relies on artificial intelligence and a network of drivers who use their vehicles to help school districts deal with transportation challenges.
Most parents take their children to school and find them in the investigation, and their responsibilities can have a big impact.
According to polls, about a third of parents say they missed work by bringing their children to school. Approximately three in three say they have been prevented from seeking job opportunities or taking them. And 11% even say that school transport has lost their jobs.
The mother in particular says that school transport needs are hampering her job and opportunities.
Smaller pay, greater vulnerability
The impact will be disproportionate Low-income families.
Approximately four in ten parents with household incomes under $100,000 a year and three in ten parents with household incomes over $100,000, said they missed out on work due to their pickup needs.
Meredyth Saied and her two children, ages 7 and 10, lived in a homeless shelter in North Carolina. Said said the father of the children has been in jail since May.
The family was eligible for government-salary air transport, but Saied said the children would arrive too early or too late under the system. So she decides to take them down and pick up herself.
She worked double shifts as a bartender and server at a French restaurant in Wilmington, but lost the job after repeatedly missing a rush of pickup dinners.
“When you have kids and there’s no village, you have to do what you have to do,” Saied said.
Latest failure: Broken car. She couldn’t afford to fix it, so she sold it to a junkyard. She hopes the school will provide better transportation for her family this year.
Not all children have access to the school bus
About half of parents living in rural and small towns say their children are still taking it. Bus to schoolit fell to about a third of urban parents.
Another AP-NORC/HopskipDrive survey of school administrators found that almost half said the shortage of school bus drivers was a “big problem” for the district.
Some school systems do not provide bus services. Otherwise, the available options will not work in the family.
In the Long Island, New York community, police officer Dorothy Criscolo’s two children attending school, provides bus services, but she doesn’t want to ride it as she was diagnosed with Neurodivergent.
“You can’t get the kids on the bus for 45 minutes with all the screams and screams. And I hope they’ll be fine once they get to school, they’re regulated and learn,” Criscuolo, 49 said. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
So Chriscolo takes them down and her wife picks them up. It doesn’t interfere much with their work, but it gets in the way of Chriscoro’s sleep. Her typical shifts are from 7pm to 7am, and her children start at different schools at different times, so it’s not uncommon to only sleep three hours a day during the school year.
The burden of transportation will be heavier on moms
Mothers are mostly By going to school, 68% say they usually take on this task, compared to 57% of fathers.
Most mothers in 55% say they missed work, lost their job, or were protected from personal or professional opportunities due to school transport needs.
Silina Franklin says she had no choice. The father of her two high school children has passed away, so she must take them and her five-year-old grandson to various schools on the south side of Chicago.
After she was late to work more than 10 times, she lost her job as a postal sorter at the post office and turned to driving Uber and Instacart to achieve her goal.
“Most of the kids, they have people who help them get them down and pick them up,” said Franklin, 41.
School pickup and drop-off missions can be easier if both parents are able to pitch.
Computer programmer Jonathan Heiner takes three children from Bellbrook, Ohio to school, where his wife picks them up.
“I do a very flexible job and the fact that she is a teacher, we are definitely very privileged, so she gets off when school leaves,” said Heiner, 45.
Parents need more options
nevertheless School bus usage is decreasing For years across the United States, many parents have hoped that schools offer other options.
Parents of about four in four said that leading children to school would be “a lot easier” or “somewhat easier” if the transportation services lined up at school, or the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure improved near the school. About the third would like earlier or later start times, or locations for intensive pickup and drop-offs on the school bus.
Joanna McFarland, CEO and co-founder of Hopskipdrive, said the district needs to regain its responsibility to ensure students are on the school.
“I don’t think the solution to this is to ask parents to look for innovative ideas,” McFarland said. “I think we need to come up with some really systematic and institutional innovative ideas.”
In Houston, Rivera is waiting for a background check for another job. In the meantime, she found new solutions to suit her family’s school transport needs.
Her 25-year-old daughter still works for Amazon on a day shift, but is back home and handling drop-offs for her three younger siblings.
“It’s been going very well,” Rivera said.
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AP-NORC public opinion of 838 US adults, parents of school-age children, took place from June 30th to July 11th and used samples drawn from the Amerispeak panel based on Norc probability, designed to represent the US population. The margin for sampling errors across adults is either positive or negative 4.6 percentage points.
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Sanders reported from Washington.
