“If I had it my way, I would never take the bus. But I have no choice,” junior Eva Ama said.
For many students like Ama, skipping the SamTrans bus isn’t an option. M-A serves five different cities, with some students commuting over six miles from the hills of Ladera and the pockets of Redwood City to get to school.
While some school districts field their own fleet of buses, many Bay Area high schools, including M-A, rely on public buses for transportation to and from campus.
SamTrans serves 12 of San Mateo County’s 27 public high schools. However, its impressive scale and nearly 200 million dollars of funding don’t guarantee high quality.
From frequent delays to overcrowding and intimidation by non-students, many M-A students find taking the bus a daily challenge. Current policy requires students to take the initiative in reporting incidents for them to be addressed, causing many serious issues to go unaddressed, harming students’ attendance and safety.
SamTrans must work to improve riding conditions by encouraging bus drivers to resolve conflicts and collaborate with school administrators to troubleshoot problems as they occur. More importantly, M-A’s administration needs to improve communication and incident reporting to empower students to advocate for themselves.
Tardiness
In a November M-A Chronicle survey of 257 juniors, 58 reported taking the bus to school. Over two-thirds of students who take the bus said that it caused them to be late to school at least twice a week.
Junior Jasmine Tupe takes the 296 every day with her sister, sophomore Dahlia Tupe. For them, the bus is almost always late. “We’ve been marked tardy because of the bus almost every single time we take it,” Jasmine said.
“The bus is often running late, and there usually aren’t enough routes or buses to accommodate every student in an efficient manner. I only rely on the bus as a last-ditch resort because of the hassle,” Kevin*, who takes the 86 bus, said.
Students said that tardiness from the bus has affected their performance in class. “I came a few minutes late for a test because of the bus, and the teacher took a few points off because of my lateness. I was pretty annoyed because I felt like my lateness was out of my control,” junior Amir Bonner said.
“The first 10 to 15 minutes of my first period are really important because that’s when we go over class instructions. When I arrive late because of the bus, I feel like I’m struggling just to keep up,” Ama said.
Studies have shown that tardiness is linked to lower academic achievement and high school graduation rates.
Student Safety
Almost every student interviewed who takes the 296 complained about the buses being too small and crowded.
“The shoving. It just has to stop,” sophomore Jada Grable said. “They grab your backpack and pull you back because they want to get a seat.”
“You always hurt yourself to get on the bus,” sophomore Estefani Cruz said.
“Last February, I had a bad ankle sprain, and I still had to take the bus. Everybody would rush to the bus, and I was on crutches, so I would get pushed around. I had a boot, and two weeks in, my boot broke because of people stepping around on the bus,” sophomore Sileih Robinson said.
Almost all students interviewed taking the 296 and 81 buses also complained about the smell. “Kids are always smoking in the back. It’s a confined space, so you can smell everything, it gets in your nostrils. You can’t breathe at all,” Grable said. “The driver doesn’t do anything. They don’t really care. It’s like this almost every day.”
Students also mentioned facing harassment and fear for their safety on the bus.
Last year, Robinson encountered a man verbally attacking students on her bus ride home. “He was talking about how Mexicans shouldn’t be on the bus and how they shouldn’t be in America,” she said.
“I tried to ignore it, but he just kept going,” Robinson continued. “He was talking to students who didn’t understand English, so they didn’t know what he was saying. He was just yelling at them,” she said. “The driver looked back a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything.”
“The bus can be dangerous. It’s not like every single day it’s something, but again, on the 296, because of where it goes and how far it stretches, you do encounter unhoused people, depending on the time of day,” junior Eboni Freeman, who has been taking the 296 for three years, said.
“One time, this homeless guy was harassing me and my friend, and the bus driver needed to call the cops because he tried to attack us,” junior Sophia*, who takes the 81, said.
Junior Bella*, who also takes the 81, described a man who followed her and her friend off the bus. “The whole time we were on it, he was staring at us,” she said. “There are times when random fights seem to break out, or the loud arguments people have in the back make it hard to feel safe.” Bella noted that more serious incidents like these only happen once or twice a month.
Communication System
Under the U.S. in loco parentis doctrine, schools can take responsibility for students’ safety going to and from school, meaning that schools are involved in resolving student conflicts or incidents that occur on the bus.
However, the only way for M-A to address issues on the bus is to receive reports from SamTrans bus drivers or students.
Bus drivers are liable for reporting incidents that occur on the bus, but SamTrans Government and Community Affairs Manager Ana Vasudeo explained that it’s difficult for drivers to enforce SamTrans’ code of conduct on their buses. “The rules are all listed there, and they’re all enforced, but it’s hard sometimes for the operators to observe everything that’s happening on the bus. They’re looking at the road, and they’re driving,” she said.
In case of an emergency, like a hijacking or robbery, SamTrans drivers pull over and dispatch transit police. Smaller incidents, however, are rarely reported.
As a result, M-A relies on student and passenger reports to find out about issues with bus congestion and safety before addressing them. However, it places the burden of reporting incidents on students without any clear guidelines on how or where to do so.
Some SamTrans buses have small posters that detail reporting procedures. Many students interviewed said they’d never noticed these posters and wouldn’t know what to do or who to contact if an incident occurred on the bus.
While M-A offers an anonymous student help line on its website, the resource isn’t clearly advertised as a place to report incidents outside of school, like on the bus.
After Robinson encountered the man who verbally harassed students on the bus, she didn’t know how to report it. “It’s a public bus, so I get that there will be some people who act like that,” she said. Many of these daily occurrences, like overcrowding and drug use, have also become normalized, which may discourage students from reporting them. “Sometimes you just adapt to it,” Robinson said. “Some people might report it when it gets really bad, but most people are used to it because they ride the bus every day.”
“I have never told [M-A administrators] because I never thought it was a big issue, and I don’t really think they could do much about it,” Bonner said.
M-A’ bus reporting system it places the burden of reporting incidents on students without any clear guidelines on how or where to do so.
Without student reports, M-A administrators don’t know about these incidents. Administrative Vice Principal Elaine Rivera-Rios said she has never received a report from students or SamTrans. “It’s unknown to us, really, we don’t get that information. Not because we can’t, but because nobody’s telling us,” she said.
While Rios noted that M-A’s SamTrans liaison, Lisa Chan, was quick to respond to some smaller concerns, they have struggled to resolve ongoing problems.
“A lot of the issues—like being late or missing a drop-off—are met with responses that are more like action steps. They just say, ‘Reach out to operations planning.’ We reach out to them, but there aren’t really any clear next steps. There’s no indication of how long it will take or what typically happens in these situations,” Rios said.
Rios mentioned that when parents share complaints, she sends an email to the liaison to resolve the issue. “It feels a little bit unresolved a lot of the time,” Rios said. “We hand it off, and they don’t get back to us. Sometimes we’re just like, ‘Okay, we haven’t heard anything new, so does that mean it’s resolved?’”
Solutions
Administrators need to clarify communication systems so students can stay informed on incidents that happen on the bus and contact SamTrans to resolve them.
Rios said she is open to this change. “The challenge is getting information in a timely manner. Maybe part of the solution is providing bus drivers with our school number and instructions on how to reach us if something happens. That could be an interim step while working toward a more long-term plan,” Rios said.
Administrators also need to improve communication with families about safety and bus arrival times. AVP secretary Roxana Fuentes, who is responsible for communicating with the SamTrans liaison, wishes for clearer, more constant time updates.
“Whenever it’s late after school, they don’t notify us,” she said. Currently, these notifications only come in the mornings, not during the afternoon when students are traveling home, so families or students don’t know when they’ll be arriving home.
SamTrans must review its routes to identify ones that are often late and either add buses to those routes or adjust timetables to ensure students consistently arrive on time.
“Taking the bus makes me want to come to school less,” junior Carter Ard said. “If that’s my only way of transportation, then I’m not going to school.”
Every student deserves to get to school on time. A responsible community should provide a safe and reliable method for its students to do so.
*The names of these interviewees are pseudonyms to protect their confidentiality.
Celine Chien and Mateo Cuellar-Koh were the lead authors of this article.
