“Not Present or Accounted For": Part 11

The following is a transcript of Part 11 of the radio series “Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools,” which was supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

There are many reasons Baltimore city students have poor attendance. Some include health problems, family issues, homelessness and academic struggles. Another is simply getting to school. In the eleventh installment of WEAA’s documentary Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools, reporter Melody Simmons investigates the daunting commute facing thousands of students each day.

"My name is Bacari Nazeer and I’m waiting for the bus to take me to school this morning."

It’s well before 7 o’clock on a chilly, gray November morning. Fourteen year-old Bacari is standing on Harford Road, watching for the No. 33 bus. His classes at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute begin at 8:15, yet the six-mile commute from his apartment to Poly aboard a Mass Transit Administration, or MTA, bus eats up nearly an hour and a half.
He tries to make the best of it.

"It’s difficult to get to school on the bus. You have to make sure you make the  bus. If you don’t make it then you’re late to school. And that’s bad when you’re late. I’m tired, because once you’re late, you miss at least one class and you want to just go home."

Baltimore is unique because, unlike its wealthy suburbs, the city has no fleets of traditional yellow school buses to take its middle and high school students to school. Instead, they are given bus passes in homeroom each month to ride the MTA.

Education advocates like Jessica Rae at the Legal Aid Bureau say that fix can be challenging and discouraging

 "What we’re finding when we spoke to the young people we work with, one of the biggest issues they’re worried about is education and access to school. When we talk about why they can’t get to school, they talk about buses driving past them, or not picking them up. They talk about what a hassle it is to get to school. They talk about being tired in school and unsuccessful, and obviously that’s a barrier that we would like to remove."

Bacari is one of nearly 50,000 city students who ride MTA, buses, light rail or Metro subway cars daily, school officials say. Many times, buses are filled to capacity, and whiz past the stop, leaving students to wait up to 20 extra minutes for the next bus. That’s defeating, Bacari said.

"I feel like that sometimes. You just don’t want to come to school. After the bus pass you once, you’re like, I should just go home. Try tomorrow."

Aboard the No. 33, Bacari sits quietly up front. Because of the early commute, he says he doesn’t have time to eat breakfast. If he’s late, he gets a detention. Another problem is braving rain, ice and snow.

"Bad weather. That’s the worst. You are running for the bus and slipping and raining and snow. That’s terrible."

15-year-old Kierra Hunter also has commuting woes. A student at Maritime Industries Academy, she lives across town relies on a string of public transportation. Her day is stressful from the get-go. If she oversleeps, she doesn’t bother trying to go to school.

"I get up at 5:30 to get to the bus stop by 6:30. And sometimes the bus be real crowded and sometimes, the bus driver don’t stop and I have to wait for the bus to come at 7:05 and I be late for school because I got to get on the bus, get on the subway, then get on another bus. And I don’t like getting the bus no more. It makes me not want to catch the bus, makes me not want to go to school."

If all that isn’t bad enough, getting home can be even worse. Bacari explained that commute often lasts more than two hours. When he gets home,

"I am tired. Exhausted. Usually when I get home, I go to sleep and that kind of mess up my homework."

Schools CEO Andres Alonso was quoted in a Baltimore Sun blog saying he aims to make student transportation a priority next year. Teens like Bacari and Kierra said last week they are trying to set up a meeting to ask that he tackle their commuting nightmares sooner.

I’m Melody Simmons, reporting from the MTA’s No. 33 bus, rolling through Baltimore.