Then Wednesday night, residents and city commissioners, including Shenise Turner-Sloss, who is running against Mims for mayor, gave their own takes on the issue.
“Election season is here. Please do not fall victim to tricks that politicians like to play inside of the city of Dayton,” said Dayton school board member Eric Walker. “Recognize what clown behavior is. ... The state does not fund public education correctly to actually do transportation.”
“A lot of people in the community are not comfortable with how long this has continued,” Mims said. “We do not want any other child to be injured, or anyone else to be injured.”
“You can’t just shuffle around the problem from place to place,” Turner-Sloss said in a statement posted on Facebook. “For too long we have had press conferences. What Dayton needs are real neighborhood-based solutions.”
Mims said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein, DPS Superintendent David Lawrence and Greater Dayton RTA CEO Bob Ruzinsky have been meeting to try to figure out a solution. He said they’ve had some productive discussions recently.
DPS busing issues
Last week, Mims spoke at a press conference where state Rep. Phil Plummer (R-Dayton) announced an amendment to the state budget bill that would prohibit school districts from transferring students at downtown bus hubs in urban areas.
Mims and Plummer said the fatal shooting of Dunbar High School student Alfred Hale on April 4 near the bus hub should not have happened and highlighted an urgent need to get Dayton Public Schools students out of downtown, away from the transit center on Main Street.
DPS Superintendent Lawrence says the idea of transporting all students via yellow school buses is cost-prohibitive and the district doesn’t have the resources to do it.
Dayton Public is required by law to transport all students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade who live more than two miles from school, with some exceptions. Most of those students ride DPS yellow school buses. The school district buys its high school students public bus passes to get to and from school.
Because DPS has a much larger share of students attending dozens of charter and private schools than other districts, and is legally responsible for transporting those students too, there is an added logistical and financial strain.
Lawrence said DPS spent $20 million on its own transportation program, and the state reimbursed about $13 million. The other $7 million, Lawrence said, does not count the bus pass costs for students from the high schools. Creating more school bus routes to transport those students would drive costs up further.
At Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting, multiple school board members said the district has very few transportation options for high school students.
“We need help because we can’t do it by ourselves,” said William Bailey, vice president of the Board of Education. He said the school district’s “hands are tied” in what it can do.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Safety and options
Mims said Wednesday that Hale was shot and killed in an unsafe space, and it’s unacceptable to continue to put kids in harm’s way by sending them to the downtown hub.
Dayton Public Schools has had busing problems for years, both in staffing and execution, despite a variety of strategies using a combination of school buses and RTA buses.
Mims said DPS’ busing problems need to be fixed by next school year. Of course there’s no guarantee that violence or disruptions wouldn’t occur at a new transfer spot, if Mims’ suggestion was put in place.
“We’re not capable of doing door-to-door service, given the current constraints that we have on the number of buses and the number of drivers,” Lawrence said. “It is, quite frankly, an impossibility. And the fact that it keeps coming up is something that the board and I find rather incredulous.”
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
School board President Chrisondra Goodwine said she would like to see city leaders help the school district and young people in the community by making investments that improve student safety.
Goodwine said DPS has nothing to do with RTA bus routes and how they choose to get riders to where they need to go.
School board member Karen Wick, who is running for city commission, urged the school board Tuesday to find a way to move DPS students away from the downtown transit hub until a longer-term transportation solution can be achieved.
“I am pleading with this board to take action to move the students away from the main bus hub,” said Wick, who said she attended Hale’s funeral service on Monday. “We have buildings, we have facilities, we have community partners and agencies that we can and should do better by.”
Nevaeh Woods, DPS’ student senate vice president who attends Ponitz High School, said she thinks it’s unfair that some people are blaming students who ride RTA buses for safety issues downtown.
Woods said some of her classmates saw Hale get shot. She said she and other students feel unsafe and are scared to go downtown.
“None of us really want to be down there, but we’re forced to be down there because that’s the only way we can get to where we need to be,” she said. “This situation should be used as, ‘These children aren’t safe downtown,’ instead of, ‘These children need to be moved from downtown.’ ”
More voices at city meeting
Multiple community members and leaders who spoke at the Dayton City Commission meeting on Wednesday said young people need safe spaces where they can hang out that are not their school or home.
“Letting students off at the downtown bus hub with no alternatives or direction is a bad decision,” said Debi Chess, Dayton Metro Library’s director of external relations and development. “We ask that you continue to work with individuals and organizations ... and Dayton Public Schools that protects and meets the needs of our young people and the residents of our community.”
Turner-Sloss also said community partners need to work together to address the root cause of violence.
“Why are we focused on removing students rather than responding to their needs?” said Tara Campbell, executive president of Dayton United for Human Rights. “Their presence downtown isn’t a threat — it’s a cry for connection.”
City Commissioner Darryl Fairchild said he didn’t understand the mayor’s press conference last week, saying it gave the impression that “there’s a unilateral solution to a big problem — and that’s unfortunate.”
Fairchild said the community needs to better support its young people; he said problems at the bus hub are a separate issue.
Fairchild said he would like to see the community try to improve youth safety and young people’s lives by studying the issue using a process similar to what the city did with police reform.
Multiple committees were formed that came up with a large number of recommendations for changes to police policies and procedures.
“What I’ve seen this community do is fail our young in providing external assets and then blame them when they don’t have the internal ones and shame them,” Fairchild said. “It’s time for us to stop that.”
Commissioner Chris Shaw said the city needs to protect its young people, and that dropping off students downtown unsupervised was a huge mistake.
“It’s dangerous — there are predators there,” he said.
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