No one wants a two-hour ride home from school. But that's the situation facing students at David Douglas High if they ride the after-school activity bus, says Jennifer Phung, the youth organizer with environmental justice group, OPAL.
"When students have to wait that long in order to go home, then they are faced with a decision, of whether or not they want to stay involved in a club or activities," Phung said.
David Douglas doesn’t offer students free TriMet bus passes, something Portland Public Schools does provide. That means students either have to pay out of pocket to ride TriMet, or ride the yellow school bus.
OPAL spent the last six months surveying about 2500 students at David Douglas, Parkrose High and several Portland Public schools.
Youth advocates hope to leverage the survey results to get free transit passes for high school students in East Portland. OPAL's report, due out Thursday, highlights the difference such passes can make in helping kids get to school, work or internships.
And the two-hour activity bus is just one problem the survey highlighted.
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David Douglas student services director Barb Kienle says poorer students who miss the yellow bus in the morning wind up missing time at school, according to what students told OPAL.
"Forty-one percent of them said that they missed the bus in the morning, and because of that, they either missed a period, or an entire day of school," she said. "They don't have any other way of getting to school, without having to pay for bus tickets on their own."
Kienle says David Douglas administrators would love to provide free TriMet rides to its high school students. But it's not that easy.
The formula for funding Portland's bus passes is pretty simple. It's "one third, one third, one third."
One third of the cost comes from TriMet, and the transit agency is willing to pay a third of the cost for other districts in their service area. That includes much of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties.
Portland Public has gotten the city of Portland to pay another third of the cost.
Phung's group has gotten the attention of Multnomah County when it comes to David Douglas and Parkrose.
"Our proposal is to fund the expansion this year," Phung said. "The cost isn't something that they can't afford, it's more of a priority. And we're trying to ask that they prioritize access for students to educational opportunities."
Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury at least wants to study the idea.
"First of all, the county's view on this is there's a need for this — a dire need," said Kafoury's spokesman, Dave Austin. "Any time that a kid can't make it to high school, that's a serious problem, and I think the county is very interested in looking at the issues that the groups are bringing up."
This might seem like a fairness issue. Portland Public students enjoy free rides. Kids at other districts don't.
But Portland Public has a special arrangement with the state.
It doesn't provide yellow school buses for most high school students. Instead, Portland Public uses state money that would go to school bus service to help buy TriMet passes.
David Douglas doesn't have that exemption and administrator Barb Kienle wants to keep running yellow buses for high schoolers.
"Our bus drivers are employees of David Douglas, they are often members of our community as well. We know that we want to continue to provide multiple opportunities for kids to get to and from school," she said.
Kienle said David Douglas could pay roughly $60,000 a year, funds that it already spends on a limited bus ticket program. But that's nowhere close to the districts' one-third share.
As for the local government share, Multnomah County leaders see the value in free bus passes. But Austin says commissioners don't have unlimited money and need to consider the entire county.
"We do have Portland and David Douglas and Parkrose, but we have a host of other school districts and we need to have those conversations," Austin said.
OPAL would like to get Multnomah County to contribute to the $600,000 cost of bus passes for the four-thousand students at David Douglas and Parkrose high schools. It would take a lot more to include all eight school districts in Multnomah County.