{"id":116813,"date":"2025-09-05T17:23:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116813\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T17:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:23:19","slug":"30-year-old-juggles-2-jobs-and-double-shifts-but-keeps-losing-work-due-to-school-drop-off-as-a-mom-you-just-find-a-way-around-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116813\/","title":{"rendered":"30-year-old juggles 2 jobs and double shifts but keeps losing work due to school drop-off: ‘As a mom, you just find a way around it’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Elizabeth Rivera\u2019s phone would ring during the overnight shift, it was usually because\u00a0the bus didn\u2019t show up<\/a>\u00a0again and one of her three kids needed a ride to school.<\/p>\n

After leaving early from her job at a Houston-area Amazon<\/a> warehouse several times, Rivera was devastated \u2014 but not surprised \u2014 when she was fired.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I\u2019m kind of depressed about it,\u201d said Rivera, 42. \u201cI\u2019m depressed because of the simple fact that it\u2019s kind of hard to find a job, and there\u2019s bills I have to pay. But at the same time, the kids have to go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivera is far from the only parent forced to choose between their job and their kids\u2019 education, according to a new poll conducted by\u00a0The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research<\/a>\u00a0and HopSkipDrive, a company that relies on artificial intelligence and a network of drivers using their own vehicles to help school districts address transportation challenges.<\/p>\n

Most parents drive their children to school, the survey found, and those responsibilities can have a major impact.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve been prevented from seeking or taking work opportunities. And 11% say school transportation has even caused them to lose a job.<\/p>\n

Mothers are especially likely to say school transportation needs have interfered with their jobs and opportunities.<\/p>\n

Smaller paychecks, bigger vulnerability<\/p>\n

The impact falls disproportionately on\u00a0lower-income families<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Around 4 in 10 parents with a household income below $100,000 a year said they\u2019ve missed work due to pick-up needs, compared with around 3 in 10 parents with a household income of $100,000 or more.<\/p>\n

Meredyth Saieed and her two children, ages 7 and 10, used to live in a homeless shelter in North Carolina. Saieed said the kids\u2019 father has been incarcerated since May.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when you\u2019ve got kids and you don\u2019t have a village, you\u2019ve got to do what you\u2019ve got to do,\u201d said Saieed, 30. \u201cAs a mom, you just find a way around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest obstacle: a broken-down car. She couldn\u2019t afford to repair it, so she sold it to a junk yard. She\u2019s hoping this year the school will offer transportation that works better for her family.<\/p>\n

Not all kids have access to a school bus<\/p>\n

Although about half of parents living in rural areas and small towns say their kids still take\u00a0a bus to school<\/a>, that fell to about one-third of parents in urban areas.<\/p>\n

A separate AP-NORC\/HopSkipDrive survey of school administrators found that nearly half said school bus driver shortages were a \u201cmajor problem\u201d in their district.<\/p>\n

Some school systems don\u2019t offer bus service. In other cases, the available options don\u2019t work for families.<\/p>\n

The community in Long Island, New York, where police Officer Dorothy Criscuolo\u2019s two children attend school provides bus service, but she doesn\u2019t want them riding it because they\u2019ve been diagnosed as neurodivergent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t 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,\u201d said Criscuolo, 49. \u201cI think it\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Criscuolo drops them off, and her wife picks them up. It doesn\u2019t interfere much with their work, but it does get in the way of Criscuolo\u2019s sleep. Because her typical shift is 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and her children start at different times at different schools, it\u2019s not uncommon for her to get only three hours of sleep a day during the school year.<\/p>\n

The transportation burden falls heavier on moms<\/p>\n

Mothers are most often the ones<\/a>\u00a0driving their children to and from school, with 68% saying they typically take on this task, compared with 57% of fathers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Syrina Franklin says she didn\u2019t 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\u2019s South Side.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the kids, they have people that help out with dropping them off and picking them up,\u201d said Franklin, 41. \u201cThey have their father, a grandmother, somebody in the family helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

When both parents are able to pitch in, school pickup and drop-off duties can be easier.<\/p>\n

Computer programmer Jonathan Heiner takes his three kids to school in Bellbrook, Ohio, and his wife picks them up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are definitely highly privileged because of the fact that I have a very flexible job and she\u2019s a teacher, so she gets off when school gets out,\u201d said Heiner, 45. \u201cNot a lot of people have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents want more options<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0the use of school buses has been declining<\/a>\u00a0for years across the U.S., many parents would like to see schools offer other options.<\/p>\n

Roughly 4 in 10 parents said getting their kids to school would be \u201cmuch easier\u201d or \u201csomewhat easier\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the way to solve this is to ask parents to look for innovative ideas,\u201d McFarland said. \u201cI think we really need to come up with innovative ideas systematically and institutionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Houston, Rivera is waiting on a background check for another job. In the meantime, she\u2019s found a new solution for her family\u2019s school transportation needs.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going very well,\u201d Rivera said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Sanders reported from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Elizabeth Rivera\u2019s phone would ring during the overnight shift, it was usually because\u00a0the bus didn\u2019t show up\u00a0again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84,1371,2201,1904,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-116813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-parenting","11":"tag-schools","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}