‘Numerous’ bus stops dropped just before school started in Sanger. Parents weren’t told
Sanger Unified cut multiple school bus stops this year with little notice to parents, many of whom are field workers who said they now must choose between providing for their family financially or getting their children to school.
In an interview with The Bee’s Education Lab, a district official said he didn’t know how many bus stops had been cut or how many of the district’s nearly 13,000 students were affected. Sanger Unified said all eliminated bus stops had been “courtesy” stops the district was never legally required to provide.
Parents who spoke out to the school board are angry.
“You’re forcing parents to choose to go work or to send the kids to school,” said Olga Loza, a community organizer for the Dolores Huerta Foundation, who said she was contacted by angry parents.
The district’s elected school board has remained silent on the issue. No board member addressed any of the questions from community members during two separate school board meetings in August. And all trustees either declined to comment to The Bee’s Education Lab, failed to respond, or referred all questions to the district’s communications department.
Parents asked the district to reverse the decision at a late-August board meeting.
With no plans to do so, Sanger Unified administration insists the changes are consistent for all families.
Why did Sanger Unified cut bus stops?
Families said they weren’t notified but had to check the bus route schedules posted online about two weeks before Sanger’s Aug. 17 start.
“You guys were not responsible for letting us know that we were not going to have transportation,” said Maria Gonzalez, a mother of five who said she only learned about the bus changes a week before school started.
Not even employees were informed about the change or why the decision was made, according to Sanger Unified Teachers Association President Stephanie Alvarado.
Listening to parents at the Aug. 9 and Aug. 23 meetings was the first time she’d heard about the bus stop cuts.
“I still don’t think teachers even know what’s going on,” she said in a recent interview with The Bee’s Education Lab.
It was a combination of many things, but not a budgetary reason, said Eduardo Martinez, the deputy superintendent of administrative services.
The district pushed its school times back because of California’s new state mandate that middle schools can’t start before 8 a.m. and high schools can’t start before 8:30 a.m. Like districts such as Clovis and Central Unified, elementary school times were also pushed back to accommodate buses picking up one age group, getting them to school, then transporting the next age group.
Also, Sanger High students are being bused from the Sanger West area so they can finish their high school career at Sanger rather than the new high school.
Because of those new constraints on busing, the district implemented its administrative regulation policy that says students within a certain mileage from their schools are not eligible for bus transportation.
“All of those demands put a strain on the system to be able to accommodate, and, consequently, those courtesy stops that were in the no-transport area were not sustainable,” Martinez said.
The current policy defines eligibility by student grade and distance between home and school:
One mile for kindergarten
One and one-quarter miles for grades 1-3
Two miles for grades 4-8
Two and a half miles for grades 9-12
Martinez said that, over time, the district has reduced that radius to be:
Half a mile for kindergarten
Three-fourths of a mile for grades 1-3
One and a half mile for grades 4-8
Two miles for high school students
But the current online policy does not reflect the reduced radius the district says it uses.
Unsure of when the policy was created, Martinez referred to his own time as a student in the ‘70s and ‘80s and said there’s always been a no-transport zone.
Despite the policy, the district has been picking up students within the no-transport zone for years, Martinez acknowledged.
“These courtesies could not be sustained,” Martinez said.
Sanger parents say district left them in a tough spot
Board policy says the district provides bus transportation “as necessary to ensure student access to the educational program, promote regular attendance and reduce tardiness.” Those things may be at stake with cut bus stops, community organizer Loza told the Sanger Unified school board.
Florinda Rodriguez has two Jefferson Elementary students. To get to work, she usually has someone take and pick them up from the bus stop. That person can’t walk them to and from school since the bus stop was eliminated.
Justina Rosales has two high schoolers, a student at Washington Academic Middle School and three students at Jefferson Elementary. Working in the fields, Rosales sent her children to school by bus – until the stop was cut.
Now students must walk to school regardless of weather, like 100-degree-plus days or rain, parents said.
Beatriz Cabellos has been leaving work early so her child doesn’t have to walk in that heat.
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do that without getting fired,” she said.
“You’re not seeing all of this,” Loza told the board. “And you’re not seeing that it’s affecting the parents – the low-income families.”
Martinez suggested families use the district’s family resource center, which provides support and can “mitigate” the circumstances.
‘Numerous’ communities affected
Multiple areas throughout the district lost the stops, but Martinez said he didn’t know how many were cut or how many people were impacted, saying it was “numerous” communities.
Frustrated and desperate for answers from the district, Gonzalez gathered 109 signatures from families who use bus transportation in the Jefferson Elementary and Washington Academic Middle School areas.
A community of about 10 families who live in a rural area but had a bus stop that took their children to Centerville Elementary for the dual language program has been affected, as well.
At the Aug. 9 Sanger Unified board meeting, Samantha Bautista called it a hardship for families.
Bautista said she now has to transport both of her children to schools that start at the same time but are 20 minutes apart because the bus will no longer pick up her first-grader. The district will still take her daughter to the dual language program at Centerville Elementary, but only if Bautista gets her to her zoned school.
Sanger Unified offers similar bus transportation to students who attend a charter school; if they get to their zoned school, a bus will take them to the charter school.
The changes allow Sanger Unified to adhere to its policy, Martinez said.
“It applies to everyone consistently,” he said.
Parents criticize Sanger Unified’s communications
The school board also received online public comments, noting their lack of communication about other changes, including students being switched to other schools.
And this isn’t the first time parents have complained about communication from the district. The school board and school district administration were criticized for a lack of communication in eliminating one of its school charters.
The district’s elected trustees have refused to discuss the issue, with some refusing even to acknowledge it.
Board President Brandon Vang said he had no comment and referred questions to the district’s public relations department.
Boardmember Tammy Wolfe, who was absent from the meeting, said she was sick and did not comment.
Boardmember Va Her was also absent from the meeting and didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Boardmembers Jesse Solorio, Jesse Vasquez and Peter Filippi, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
After the meeting, Boardmember Mike Hernandez told the Education Lab he was glad parents came to the meeting but said he couldn’t comment as the school system was still working on the issue.
Community members also said all of the district’s limited information was exclusively in English.
“This is a (predominantly) Latino community,” Loza said. “You need to be prepared. They need to be able to understand everything.”
Of Sanger Unified’s 11,091 students, 7,847 ( 70%) are Hispanic, based on 2021 state data. A little over 15% are English learners.
Bus stops aren’t coming back, Sanger Unified says
Despite the anger and frustration parents expressed, the district has no plans to bring the bus stops back, saying doing so would violate the district’s transportation policy.
Reducing the mileage radius even more for eligible students isn’t in the district’s “immediate reach” either, according to Martinez. It’s not “feasible” to do so for 20 schools, he discussed, noting the demand it would have on operations.
“We take every family’s input very seriously, and we’re not going to dismiss them,” Martinez said. “But it’s important to be consistent and supportive of our entire communities at all times.”
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