Moms' careers and personal time are hit hard by school drop-off demands,
a poll finds
[September 04, 2025] By
JEFF McMURRAY and LINLEY SANDERS
CHICAGO (AP) — When Elizabeth Rivera's phone would ring during the
overnight shift, it was usually because the bus didn't show up again and
one of her three kids needed a ride to school.
After leaving early from her job at a Houston-area Amazon warehouse
several times, Rivera was devastated — but not surprised — when she was
fired.
“Right now, I’m kind of depressed about it,” said Rivera, 42. “I’m
depressed because of the simple fact that it’s kind of hard to find a
job, and there’s bills I have to pay. But at the same time, the kids
have to go to school.”
Rivera is far from the only parent forced to choose between their job
and their kids' education, according to a new poll conducted by The
Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and
HopSkipDrive, a company that relies on artificial intelligence and a
network of drivers using their own vehicles to help school districts
address transportation challenges.
Most parents drive their children to school, the survey found, and those
responsibilities can have a major impact.
About one-third of parents say taking their kids to school has caused
them to miss work, according to the poll. Roughly 3 in 10 say they've
been prevented from seeking or taking work opportunities. And 11% say
school transportation has even caused them to lose a job.
Mothers are especially likely to say school transportation needs have
interfered with their jobs and opportunities.
Smaller paychecks, bigger vulnerability
The impact falls disproportionately on lower-income families.
Around 4 in 10 parents with a household income below $100,000 a year
said they've missed work due to pick-up needs, compared with around 3 in
10 parents with a household income of $100,000 or more.
Meredyth Saieed and her two children, ages 7 and 10, used to live in a
homeless shelter in North Carolina. Saieed said the kids' father has
been incarcerated since May.
Although the family qualified for government-paid transportation to
school, Saieed said the kids would arrive far too early or leave too
late under that system. So, she decided to drop them off and pick them
up herself.
She had been working double shifts as a bartender and server at a French
restaurant in Wilmington but lost that job due to repeatedly missing the
dinner rush for pickups.
“Sometimes when you’ve got kids and you don’t have a village, you’ve got
to do what you’ve got to do,” said Saieed, 30. “As a mom, you just find
a way around it.”
The latest obstacle: a broken-down car. She couldn't afford to repair
it, so she sold it to a junk yard. She's hoping this year the school
will offer transportation that works better for her family.
Not all kids have access to a school bus
Although about half of parents living in rural areas and small towns say
their kids still take a bus to school, that fell to about one-third of
parents in urban areas.
A separate AP-NORC/HopSkipDrive survey of school administrators found
that nearly half said school bus driver shortages were a “major problem”
in their district.
Some school systems don't offer bus service. In other cases, the
available options don't work for families.
The community in Long Island, New York, where police Officer Dorothy
Criscuolo's two children attend school provides bus service, but she
doesn't want them riding it because they've been diagnosed as
neurodivergent.
“I can’t have my kids on a bus for 45 minutes, with all the screaming
and yelling, and then expect them to be OK once they get to school, be
regulated and learn,” said Criscuolo, 49. “I think it’s impossible.”
[to top of second column] |
School buses are lined up in a storage lot, Aug. 14, 2025, in
Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File
 So Criscuolo drops them off, and her
wife picks them up. It doesn't interfere much with their work, but
it does get in the way of Criscuolo's sleep. Because her typical
shift is 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and her children start at different times
at different schools, it's not uncommon for her to get only three
hours of sleep a day during the school year.
The transportation burden falls heavier on moms
Mothers are most often the ones driving their children to and from
school, with 68% saying they typically take on this task, compared
with 57% of fathers.
Most mothers, 55%, say they have missed work, have lost jobs or were
kept from personal or professional opportunities because of school
transportation needs, compared with 45% of dads.
Syrina Franklin says she didn't have a choice. The father of her two
high school-age children is deceased, so she has to take them and a
5-year-old grandson to different schools on Chicago's South Side.
After she was late to work more than 10 times, she lost her job as a
mail sorter at the post office and turned to driving for Uber and
Instacart to make ends meet.
“Most of the kids, they have people that help out with dropping them
off and picking them up,” said Franklin, 41. “They have their
father, a grandmother, somebody in the family helps.”
When both parents are able to pitch in, school pickup and drop-off
duties can be easier.
Computer programmer Jonathan Heiner takes his three kids to school
in Bellbrook, Ohio, and his wife picks them up.
“We are definitely highly privileged because of the fact that I have
a very flexible job and she's a teacher, so she gets off when school
gets out,” said Heiner, 45. “Not a lot of people have that.”
Parents want more options
Although the use of school buses has been declining for years across
the U.S., many parents would like to see schools offer other
options.
Roughly 4 in 10 parents said getting their kids to school would be
“much easier” or “somewhat easier” if there were more school bus
routes, school-arranged transportation services or improved
pedestrian and bike infrastructure near school. Around a third cited
a desire for earlier or later start times, or centralized pick-up
and drop-off locations for school buses.
Joanna McFarland, the CEO and co-founder of HopSkipDrive, said
districts need to reclaim the responsibility of making sure students
have a ride to school.
“I don't think the way to solve this is to ask parents to look for
innovative ideas,” McFarland said. "I think we really need to come
up with innovative ideas systematically and institutionally."
In Houston, Rivera is waiting on a background check for another job.
In the meantime, she's found a new solution for her family's school
transportation needs.
Her 25-year-old daughter, who still works at Amazon on a day shift,
has moved back into the home and is handling drop-offs for her three
younger siblings.
“It's going very well,” Rivera said.
___
The AP-NORC poll of 838 U.S. adults who are parents of school-age
children was conducted June 30-July 11, using a sample drawn from
NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be
representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error
for adults overall is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points.
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