Would Wake ask parents to pay for school transportation? Survey raises alarm bells.

Wake County says it’s not considering asking parents to pay for school transportation, even though that is among the questions in an online survey being promoted by the district.

The school system is partnering with N.C. State University researchers to survey families on their transportation preferences. Among the survey’s questions is whether parents would be willing to pay $100 to $250 a week to hire a driver to take their child to and from school instead of riding a school bus.

“We felt like it was worthwhile to explore this as a potential model in light of the current situations we face with busing and getting kids to where they need to be,” Roger von Haefen, an N.C. State professor and researcher on the study, said in an interview Tuesday.

The survey has raised questions on social media about whether Wake might be considering it as an alternative or supplement to school bus service. But Sara Clark, a school district spokesperson, said in an interview Tuesday that the idea is not on the table despite the ongoing school bus driver shortage.

Clark said the questions about hiring a private driver came from the N.C. State researchers. She said Wake is not paying N.C. State for the survey.

Bus driver shortage

As part of its weekly community message to parents, Wake urged families last week to take the survey because “we we want to hear from you whether your child currently receives district transportation services or not.”

“Results of this survey will be analyzed by researchers and shared with district leaders to support future policy and planning,” according to Wake’s message.

Survey respondents are asked questions about the length of their child’s bus commute and whether they’d still use the bus if the ride times were even longer.

The questions come as school districts across the nation deal with bus driver shortages that sometimes force families to provide their own transportation when the bus isn’t running. Wake has a driver shortage of more than 30%.

Would you Uber to school?

Then respondents are told about an “an alternative to busing — driver service.”

“Some WCPSS families currently hire drivers to transport their students to and from school,” according to the survey. “Families that pay for these services have found them to be safe and efficient means of transportation, and they appreciate the time savings to both parents/guardians and students.”

The survey then asks respondents how willing they’d be to enroll in this driver service at varying weekly rates, depending on how far the family lives from the school. All the options say it would be for less time than the student now spends per week on the bus.

The questions are based on how some families use services like Uber and Lyft for school transportation, according to von Haefen. He said they’ve already received more than 5,000 survey responses.

As a Wake parent, von Haefen said he’s wondered about the impact waiting in carpool lines has on his time, his children’s time and on air pollution.

“All school districts in North Carolina are constantly trying to improve the transportation service that they provide to children and their families,” von Haefen said. “Knowing how parents and children and families trade off time, reliability and money is important because implicitly we’re making these trade-offs all the time when we’re making transportation decisions.”