In early October, Tamesha Foster moved her family from Lynchburg, Virginia to Charlottesville’s 10th & Page neighborhood.
Her new home is in the Westhaven public housing community, and less than a mile from Trailblazer Elementary School. But Foster was surprised to learn that a school bus would not take her 8-year-old daughter to school. And, because Foster also has a 1-year-old daughter, she was uncertain how to get her baby to daycare while also getting her older child to school by 8 a.m.
“How am I supposed to take her [to school] and get my 1-year-old to daycare in time?” said Foster, who also works as a private babysitter.
A short while later, Foster learned about City of Promise, a nonprofit focused on ending generational poverty. City of Promising is running a program to walk students from Westhaven the half mile to and from Trailblazer each day.
City of Promise took over the Westhaven and 10th & Page walking school bus program at the start of the 2024-2025 school year. It stepped in after Charlottesville City Schools ended the program in June, when the school division no longer had enough teachers to work the walking school bus for the Westhaven housing community in the mornings and afternoons.
When Foster found out about City of Promise’s role in the walking school bus program, she could breathe a sigh of relief.
She now spends mornings looking after her youngest child while the walking school bus helps her older daughter get to school safely.
Take Action
City of Promise’s walking school buses for Trailblazer Elementary School students in the Westhaven and 10th & Page neighborhood is accepting applications for volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering to lead a walking school bus, please email Crystal Johnson, director of Community Schools, City of Promise at cjohnson [at] cityofpromise [dot] org.
Transportation isn’t a new challenge for City Schools. The school division struggled with hiring and retaining bus drivers since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problem grew after students resumed in-school learning.
Before the 2022-2023 school year, families in Westhaven were split between two elementary schools. But long before then, in 1966 when City Schools schools were undergoing desegregation, Black students, specifically those who lived in Westhaven, were zoned for Burnley-Moran Elementary School. Burnley-Moran is almost three miles away from Westhaven, whereas Trailblazer is much closer to the community.
That changed in 2019, when City Schools allowed families to switch their students to Trailblazer (called Venable Elementary until the start of this school year). In 2022, the school division decided to rezone the families to their neighborhood elementary school.
But that decision presented a new problem. Trailblazer and Buford Middle School students who lived in Westhaven and the 10th & Page neighborhood no longer had a bus to take them to school. Thus, dozens of students were placed in “family responsibility zones,” which are areas close enough to public schools that the district does not provide bus transportation.
City Schools wanted to make sure that students, specifically elementary students, were getting to school despite not having a bus. So they created walking school buses in 2022, after expanding the district’s family responsibility zones. The district asked teachers at two schools — Trailblazer and Summit Elementary Schools — to walk students from nearby neighborhoods to and from school. The teachers were paid $16 an hour.
Fast forward to 2024 and City Schools was in another bind. Interest dwindled among Trailblazer teachers who ran the walking buses, which had an average of about 50 students.
Many of the teachers couldn’t handle the buses on top of their instructional workload, and told City Schools at the end of the 2023-2024 school year that they would no longer provide the assistance, Superintendent Royal Gurley told Charlottesville Tomorrow in September.
Other teachers considered their roles “transitional” until more lasting alternatives were established, said a school division spokesperson.
“In a perfect world, we would have definitely wanted more time to plan for it, but these are the kinds of cards that were dealt to us,” said Gurley.
City Schools needed a solution. In July, it reached out to different community groups for assistance before choosing City of Promise, which has an office near Westhaven.. The organization agreed to help City Schools provide transportation to Trailblazer for students in the community, and soon both parties were working on the transition.
On July 25, Trailblazer administrators sent a message through ParentSquare, a digital platform used to communicate with families, alerting Westhaven and 10th & Page communities that it would no longer conduct the walking school buses. However, the alert said that City of Promise will gauge the community’s needs to “co-create solutions with families who experience this change as a hardship to student attendance.”
“We know that many of you have already found other safe and effective ways for your child to get to school and back, including carpools and informal walking buddies,” the Trailblazer notice stated. “For others, we encourage you to reach out to friends, family, and neighbors to see how you can help one another.”
But the transition took time, said Price Thomas, executive director of City of Promise. On Aug. 14, the first day of school, the organization began overseeing the walking school buses. It paused the walking school buses two weeks later on Aug. 30 for several reasons, said Thomas.
In addition to concerns about safety, City of Promise did not have the information required to conduct the walks, such as students’ emergency contact information and a roster of kids who regularly walked with the group, Thomas said.
City of Promise took the next couple of weeks to work with Trailblazer administrators and teachers to determine whether transportation support was still needed in the Westhaven and 10th & Page community. City of Promise asked families how their children were getting to school to see how it could help, or if there even was an issue, said Thomas.
On some days during the pause, City Schools or City of Promise workers saw parents walking or driving their children to school. There were other days when no students showed up to the walking school buses.
“It’s critical for us that we understand if we are meeting needs effectively,” Thomas told Charlottesville Tomorrow on Sept. 19. “There is a lot of nuance in the conversation between equipping and enabling, and I want to be sure that we are both building agency and providing resources equitably.”
Not all families had figured it out, City of Promise found. Transportation support was still needed.
City of Promise restarted the walking buses last month, and also hired Crystal Johnson as director of Community Schools. Her role involves helping families with chronic absenteeism and literacy proficiency. In addition, City of Promise gained volunteer support from the Charlottesville Police Department and University of Virginia volunteers to assist with the walking buses. The nonprofit also plans to hire more liaisons to help families get their children to school.
They have received four applications for the roles from people who live in the Westhaven and 10th and Page communities, which are currently being reviewed, said Johnson.
Children tend to use the walking bus more in the afternoon than in the morning, said Johnson. At 7:15 a.m., about eight children typically use the walking bus; they walk up to 26 kids home in the afternoons.
City Schools and City of Promise have been working on an agreement, a memorandum of understanding, since July and hope it will be signed this week, said Thomas. As a part of the pending agreement, City Schools promised to allocate the funds it set aside for the compensated staffers — who were paid $16 an hour — to support City of Promise’s transportation initiatives.
Thomas said that his nonprofit will add an additional $4 to the hourly wage for its employees who work the walking buses, increasing the pay to $20 an hour.
Looking forward, City Schools employees are tracking student absenteeism data to identify new trends following the pause of the walking school buses, said Gurley.
As of Oct. 31, Trailblazer had “not identified any families whose child’s attendance is driven by the presence/absence of the walking bus,” Gurley said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. The school did find some families who were struggling with tardiness, Gurley said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow, and noted that they were directed to City of Promise to identify solutions.
“We’re watching attendance data and we’re being very responsive,” said Gurley.
Meanwhile, being able to access the buses continues to be a godsend for Tamesha Foster, who relies on the extra assistance from City of Promise.
Without the bus, “I probably would have been stressed,” she said, adding that it is comforting to know that background checks and other safety measures are being taken before walkers are hired.
“The people who are there walking the kids to school are very nice,” Foster said. “They keep my daughter at the front of the line because she’s really friendly and likes to talk to everybody.”
Editor’s note: This article was corrected at 4 p.m. on Nov. 14 to say that the walking school buses are at Trailblazer and Summit Elementary Schools, not Johnson Elementary School as previously reported.
