CMSD Expands Yellow Busing to Middle School Students

The district says parents can download its app to track school bus locations. Credit: dhendrix73 / flickrcc

In a move sure to please parents across the city, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will extend yellow school bus services to seventh and eighth graders for the 2023-2024 school year. In the past, sseventh and eighth grade students had to take public transportation instead, or find other arrangements.

“At the end of last fiscal year, we made a purchase of 80 new school buses and 62 passenger buses,” said CMSD executive director of transportation Eric Taylor. “With that purchase now we will have the flexibility to get our students back on yellow school buses, keeping in consideration, per the state, that we did not have a choice in scheduling non-public [school] students on our school buses.”

In Ohio, districts are required to transport eligible non-public school students to and from school. For the upcoming school year, CMSD will use the same criteria it follows in determining location eligibility for kindergarten through sixth grade students for seventh and eighth grade students.

“If a seventh or eighth grader falls outside of that boundary and is used to getting public transportation on the RTA we’re going to still provide that opportunity for that parent or that child to use public transportation to get to school,” said Taylor.

For parents whose children will be riding CMSD yellow school buses, Taylor encourages downloading the CMSD bus tracking app. Although he says the app still needs work, it allows parents to monitor the location of their child’s bus in real time.

“We’re not where we need to be with that, but it is a process that we are working on,” Taylor said. “So now you’ve got that component of bus tracking as well as student tracking. So there’s a big safety component of that. Then, for me, [expanding yellow bus service] was an equity piece as well.”

After John Adams High School student Pierre McCoy was fatally shot at a bus stop outside his school earlier this year, former CMSD CEO Eric Gordon said the district was working with the city, police and RTA to improve safety and busing.

At the time of his death, McCoy had been waiting for the bus for nearly an hour, according to Gordon. He said the school district was working with a cross-agency team — the city, police and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority — to improve busing and safety measures.

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