Beginning in the 2025-2026 school year, students from four Austin Independent School District (AISD) schools will have a different bus system for getting to and from school. This system establishes hubs for students to get bused to and from. Instead of getting dropped off within 1.25 miles from home, magnet students will be bussed to their school from the high or middle school closest to their houses.
According to Kris Hafezizadeh, the transportation director for AISD, this change was made to reduce AISD’s budget deficit, which is currently estimated to be over $110 million for the next school year. After AISD’s board of trustees and superintendent examined a variety of costs cutting options for the district—a process which, according to Hafezizadeh, was full of tough conversations and decisions—the board decided that the least harmful expense to reduce would be changes in the transportation system of four magnet schools: Lively, LASA, Kealing, and Ann Richards School For Young Women Leaders.
“It’s $4 million per year to provide transportation just for these four schools,” Hafezizadeh said. “[It] would be [the] parents’ responsibility or caregivers to bring our students to and from those secondary schools for a.m., p.m., and late activities.”
This move would save AISD an estimated $1.2 million. However, it is only a fraction of the budget deficit, and data provided by AISD shows that total transportation spending exceeds $38 million. This cost-saving program can also not be expanded much beyond the four schools slated to implement a hub system. According to Hafezizadeh, this is because magnet buses travel all over the city, while neighborhood buses do not travel far from the school’s surrounding area.
“I’m going to use the example of where I live,” Hafezizadeh said. “We go inside almost every single street to pick up kids … Instead of putting [the stop] there, we are gonna put it at Bowie or Small Middle School.”
Despite proponents of the change suggesting that it might improve the lives of bus riders, significant concerns persist amongst students who rely on the bus to get to and from school. Declan Connor, a senior at LASA who no longer uses the bus, explained how the current bus system negatively impacted his experience.
“It’s about 20 minutes from [LASA] to my house,” Connor said. “When I used to ride the bus, I would say I would leave at about 4:00 [p.m.], and I would get back at about 6:30-ish. People like me who live really far away rely on a bus, and maybe for people who can’t wait [to get home] … a hub system would make it a lot more difficult and take a lot more time for those people.”
Junior Ezekiel Gregory explained that having transportation is one of the things that allows him to attend LASA. A hub system would have been a significant factor to consider when deciding whether to enroll in a magnet school, such as LASA, over his closer neighborhood school.
“I can barely walk to my bus stop now,” Gregory said. “I’m disabled, so my parents have to come get me. I will literally wait at the stop as long as I have to. I can’t walk that.”
According to Hafezizadeh, AISD has reached out to the principals of affected schools and encouraged them to try to implement carpooling at a campus level. As for those who still have concerns over the system, Hafezizadeh strongly encourages them to use the AISD Let’s Talk feature on their website to speak to district employees.
“It is a new thing for our schools, it is gonna be a new thing for my team,” Hafezizadeh said. “But I guarantee you that we will do everything to provide the best way. We have already started to brainstorm about exact locations and things like that, but we will listen to our families.”
