This isn’t really rocket science, it’s not brain surgery, it’s a simple math problem. And our superintendent is a math teacher, yet he seems incapable of solving the equation.
I actually explained how to solve this problem in my video “There ain’t no “F” in Dayton” that I did long ago (Dec 22, 2016 to be exact):
If you’re looking at the video thumbnail it says “7 minutes on how to fix a failing urban school district” and it has 3 apples, School year/day, school funding, and school transportation.
The district is figuring out how to transport students to school next year. DPS Superintendent David Lawrence said he has met with DPS principals to discuss the problem and business manager Marvin Jones said his team, which oversees transportation, is “working fanatically” to find a solution.
Dayton Daily news article July 14, 2025 Dayton Public Schools board: State ‘tied our hands’ with new busing law
Considering school starts in about 2 weeks, you’d think this would be solved, but it’s not. And, while Dr. Lawrence thinks this isn’t his issue anymore since the School Board hired Dr. Marvin Jones as the Business Manager, and then hired Stacey Benson Taylor as his assistant (no job posting- and a huge $30K raise in less than 6 months) You can’t be Superintendent of a district where half the high schoolers have no way to get to school.
The fact that the local “public transit” agency Greater Dayton RTA was somehow charging students a premium for a bus pass was questionably legal to begin with. That State Rep Phil Plummer and Dayton Mayor Jeff Mims are now buddy buddy- in praising the state legislature for banning the transfer of students downtown is downright unconstitutional (equal protection act of the 14th amendment anyone?).
The reason Dayton Public Schools can’t afford to bus high school students is because the idiots in the state house require DPS to bus charter and parochial school kids as an unfunded mandate. Besides making the routing much more complicated, and adding a ton of options, there is no restriction or control of bell times for the non-DPS schools, making things even more screwed up.
Throw in the State fines the district for kids or buses being late, tells the district they have to provide to the door service on all these other schools, and fails to acknowledge there is a nationwide shortage of bus drivers to begin with.
How do we solve this? Start out realizing there are some fixed parameters and the variable ones. First the fixed:
- Bell times
- Drop off points
- Number of Drivers
- Number of buses
- Number of Schools
- Walk distance
And the only variables: Collection Points, and time of delivery after schools are out.
Currently, the district picks up in the middle of neighborhoods, forcing bus drivers to drive down narrow streets, and make multiple stops. Streets in the urban core are sometimes hardly wide enough for cars never mind buses. And while some kids with special needs require door to door- these can be handled by short buses- that don’t require a Commercial Drivers license to drive.
First solution: Designate pick up points throughout the city that kids can reach by walking less than half a mile. These pickup points are supervised, either at schools (public, charter, parochial), or at churches, libraries, rec centers, etc. These pick up points are carefully chosen to prevent kids from having to cross major roadways, but are also on roads built for heavier traffic. The key is the supervision, with remote check-in, starting the truancy process as much as an hour BEFORE the first bell at school.
This also facilitates a hub and spoke system, with kids transferring buses at various pickup points for the next destination. DPS can make it so the non-DPS kids have it a little more complicated- with multiple transfers.
Second part is delivering non-DPS students to school on DPS’s bell times. If you don’t conform, you either get your kids at our bell time, or ungodly early. You want to play games, you pay with staff overtime.
Ideally, DPS shouldn’t have to drop all kids directly at the non-dps schools. making kids walk the last bit, but I’ve been told that this isn’t allowed by law. Face it, all of these kids need to walk more anyway.
The second part of the equation is to distribute kids after school in waves. Part of this acknowledges parents in poverty look at school as childcare- and many would love to have their kids coming home closer to 5:30 or 6 than in the middle of the afternoon. This is where the kids after school are allowed to ride to other schools for coordinated after school activities.
Each building can have specialized programs that appeal to different kids. Music at one, cheerleading another, chess club, photography, specific sports etc. Parent’s can then pick kids up, or be delivered later on an activity bus- that can drop them within a half mile of home.
Even better idea: DPS no longer tries to field a Football or Basketball team at every school building- but instead, has a single Dayton team that competes regionally, and has a JV league for developing talent. Face it, high schools with only 400 kids can’t be competitive with schools like the one I went to where there were 2400 kids in 10th through 12th grades. Bigger census, more talent. If we’re trying to build a district people want to move into and attend, winning sports programs that are well run help.
This also increases opportunities to expand extra curricular activities because now you don’t need 40 kids in one school interested in chess- you can draw from the whole city.
But, if we still can’t figure out how to improve the district, make it more desirable and improve parental approval, cut down kids running the streets, and rebuild our community, well, there is an election coming up for School Board and you may have enough choices to get rid of the worst school board members ever (Chrisondra Goodwine and Joe Lacey, Karen Wick helped you out by leaving the board for her race for City Commission- you can also not vote for her).
But, if this is all too much to solve in the next two weeks, the district can do something the State Legislature didn’t think of: buy ebikes, safety vests and helmets for all the high school kids that live more than a mile from their DPS high school. No one said we had to provide bikes to students who go to charters or church run schools. Kids who graduate get to keep the bikes, those who don’t, we reclaim them. The initial buy of enough bikes for all the HS kids will be substantial, but each additional year will be considerably less as we only have to buy for incoming 9th graders and we’ll reclaim some from drop-outs.
The E-Bike solution does a few things: it empowers kids to be able to get to jobs all over the city. It increases the number of bike commuters using bike lanes. It helps kids get fit. It makes our community more aware of how many kids we have that aren’t running the streets with guns, but going to school to get educated and be a productive part of our community. Buying ebikes for kids as opposed to buying hoodies is empowering – and game changing.
Of course, two weeks out is a little late to be going out to bids, but, if you fire the superintendent and take his $200K plus his Ford Bronco and fire the business manager and the assistant business manager, and you take their Ford Bronco’s away too, we’re getting close to buying half the bikes pretty quick, throw in the money we overspent for RTA bus passes and we’re golden. The reality is, we don’t have leaders with any kind of creative problem solving skills. The first thing they ask is always, “where has this been done before.”
Maybe we should be asking: why can’t you creatively solve this problem?
If you plan this right, you can group riders together on a “Bike Bus” with kids riding bikes instead of being in a sardine can of a bus. This makes it safer to take over complete lanes. Also realize there are e-bikes with limiters, mine for instance, no matter how hard I pedal, won’t go faster than about 19.1 miles per hour thanks to a governor.
The best part about an ebike solution is that we’re not spewing diesel fumes, wearing down roads or having to worry about bus drivers showing up. The bad part, the city would have to actually plow our streets in the winter. For those of you who are worried about kids riding in snow- I rode my bike everyday to junior high in the snow, uphill, both ways, and I did it without a helmet and I survived. In high school, I was more interested in walking to and from school because of a few very cute girls I used to walk home with.
We will see what the highly paid brain trust at DPS comes up with, or fails with. But, just remember, when Fred Smith turned in his college thesis on how to get packages to places overnight- with the idea that became Federal Express, he got a “C” from his professor.
Right now, DPS should be happy with a “C” in anything.
Song: No Wheels, No Deal. By David Esrati
It seems like the school districts just wanna fuck with the parents and make it as hard as possible on them. Same thing goes on in Huber Heights. They took away the busing years back to try to force the parents to pass a school levy as they said they could not afford to haul all the kids to school like they were doing. The amount that they needed to haul the kids to the schools was 2$50,000-$400,000 a year. What they didn’t figure is even if you add in all the parents it’s still not enough votes to pass a levy. Time to figure out a better way than property tax and tax the people to death to pay for the schools that suck and produce shitty ass results.
You obviously know nothing how Ohio high school sports works.
In a rare admission lol, I’m going to agree with Tim Hart on his first comment here. It does seem like things are created to mess with parents sometimes, but I don’t think Huber Heights or Dayton Public school board members are staying up at night to plot revenge on hapless school families. School boards are required to follow the law regarding busing. Parents are always in the driver’s seat for education and busing choices regarding their children. These choices are directly linked to where they live.
Working parents and their children face many challenges, today and always: housing needs, gainful employment, quality daycare, financial pressures, health insurance, government interference, lawmaker indifference, time constraints, safety, and so much more. It’s not easy being a parent these days.
The repeated jamming of school levies down the throats of citizens is not helpful, especially when they keep getting defeated. No means no. Budgets and services get cut. Citizens and parents should learn about their school district funding and spending to be informed, which would help school board members, administrators, teachers, children, and the community at large.
It’s a fact, however, that private/parochial vouchers are sucking the public teat dry.
https://www.statenews.org/section/the-ohio-newsroom/2025-01-28/how-ohio-became-a-model-in-the-nationwide-movement-to-expand-private-school-vouchers
Education funding in Ohio has been a persistent problem and has been found by the courts to be unconstitutional numerous times.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/06/26/public-school-advocates-claim-victory-as-ohio-judge-calls-private-voucher-program-unconstitutional/
David clearly has a very creative mind. He is not married nor has kids, but if he did he might see it from a different perspective. Bikes are nice, but are not helpful for school transportation en mass. I suggest David run for Dayton school board and try out some of those ideas he keeps coming up with. I completely agree with David that we must do better. It’s not rocket science.
There should only be public education with no charter or private schools. Driving the catholics around was our first mistake and now we have made it worse. From 1963 to 1973 the US ran a ‘natural’ experiment on providing excellent public education which proved that hiring males and females with college degrees and zero teaching experience churned out some of the most accomplished people on the planet. This natural experiment was the result of our society limiting educated females to the career fields of teaching or nursing until 1973 and the war in Vietnam which forced many unmarriageable college graduating men to take an offer from LBJ they could not refuse – teach or go to the front. The best teachers I had at Kettering Fairmont East HS were all hired prior to 1973 and I find it sad that women fled from the teaching field to pursue their dreams while disparaging the field of teaching. Society should have paid teachers like doctors and lawyers and women did not argue for that as Terri Gross dead pans in her interview with Bill Burr. “Because historically women didn’t. But now a lot of women do because women are allowed to be lawyers. Women are allowed to do all kinds of jobs that pay that they weren’t allowed to do before, including being doctors”. Even so called progressive women disparage teaching and that is why we are in the stupid mess in the first place. Paying teachers a competitive wage as accountants, lawyers and doctors will ensure a quality education for your kids. Alas society did not want to pay for that quality and now public education is less than it should be and getting less everyday, especially when society wants to teach using the embellished oral history of the Jewish people as its guide book. OY what could go wrong? The loss of the Republic that’s what. It’s not about your college, it is where you went to high school that matters. I am still trying to find any person that graduated from a Florida public high school that amounted to… Read more »
Private and parochial schools now garner 1.3 BILLION dollars of Ohio’s school fund. Wher the hell is the First Amendment? David Lawrence tells me that the Ohio Supreme Court recently again judged the voucher system unconstitutional.
This is a job for Gary (one-term mayor) Leitzell!
Well, here we are in a new school year and no school busing for DPS high school students.
https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-public-wont-bus-high-school-students-next-year/2EP44TXEOVHTJJNY34NX2V3JT4/
Dayton voters can thank directly Ohio House Rep Phil Plummer for yanking bus passes through his amendment to House Bill 96, now passed and in force. Plummer singled out Dayton specifically for the pain. He wants to be a state senator. I don’t think so. We’re not like his jail inmates to be abused.
https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/dayton/news/2025/08/01/dps-high-schoolers-to-navigate-own-transportation-to-school
With Ohio House Rep Phil Plummer and Dayton Mayor Jeff Mims working against Dayton Public School students, who needs enemies in Dayton? We have our own home grown ones.
What did US House Rep Mike Turner discuss with Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward?
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1338757347607283&set=a.463542105128816
In lieu of government guidance, perhaps Dayton Public Schools should go over their budget very carefully, pare it down to bare bones, jettison the extra layers of management and Dem party hires, find transportation funds, train/hire/pay drivers, get the buses back up to speed, and transport the children. They used to do it. It’s not impossible.
It’s clear Dayton cannot look to the electeds for guidance. Montgomery County should care and help since Dayton is the county seat. The Dayton School Board simply must find a solution that works for the students and citizens.