Walton, Dunbar, Young Men\u2019s Leadership Academy or Jacquet were nowhere on the list provided to managers. The four campuses serve the historically Black Stop Six area. Black students make up a majority of enrollment at Walton and Dunbar and about 4 in 10 students at Jacquet and Young Men\u2019s Leadership Academy.<\/p>\n
Haynes asked for transportation in 2024 as construction around Loop 820 complicated students\u2019 walks to school. The district told her that students living within 2 miles of school were not eligible for regular bus service, she said.<\/p>\n
Haynes kept calling. She contacted city officials and schools and brought the issue to the school board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t asking on behalf of just me and my kids. I was asking for the community as a whole,\u201d Haynes told the Fort Worth Report.<\/p>\n
FWISD eventually provided transportation for Haynes\u2019 children, but when she tried to get it done for other children in her neighborhood, she was told their families would have to contact the transportation department individually.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when it became problematic,\u201d Haynes said.<\/p>\n
At a community meeting in August, Haynes raised the issue with managers Laurie George and Luis Galindo. George notified Haynes and Parent Shield that hazardous-route transportation was scheduled for consideration at the Sept. 8 board meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Haynes looked at the list and noticed her neighborhood missing.<\/p>\n
Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, the founder of Parent Shield, contacted FWISD on Sept. 4 to request transportation for students at Walton, Dunbar, Young Men\u2019s Leadership Academy and Jacquet, district spokesperson Evan Anderson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0817-MC-HazardousRoutesUpdate-12-1024x682.jpg\")
Just east of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and Maudrie M. Walton Elementary, students cross through construction underway beneath Loop 820 to get from the neighborhoods to schools on the other side of the highway on Sept. 18, 2026. A dirt path and the road are separated by a concrete barrier. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report\/CatchLight Local\/Report for America)<\/p>\n
Director of Transportation Rufus Huckaby looked around the area that day. He observed significant construction, a pedestrian walkway with barricades and two crossing guards directing students under the Loop 820 bridge at Ramey Avenue, Anderson said.<\/p>\n
District officials met with Parent Shield on Sept. 10, Haynes and Anderson said.<\/p>\n
Haynes told managers on Sept. 8 that they shouldn\u2019t approve hazardous-route transportation while leaving Stop Six students off the list. Superintendent Peter Licata said the district didn\u2019t want students walking through dangerous construction areas and would address the concern.<\/p>\n
Two days later, Haynes and Dorsey-Hollins arrived at the transportation department. Haynes expected another discussion about whether service was possible, she said.<\/p>\n
Instead, FWISD proceeded to map the stops, assigned a bus and determined pickup times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked when they said we\u2019re starting it tomorrow,\u201d Haynes said.<\/p>\n
And they did.<\/p>\n
The three stops are on Vel Drive. One for Walton students, one for Dunbar and Young Men\u2019s Leadership Academy students, and one for Jacquet students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Any student living in the affected area is eligible for transportation at one of the three stops, Anderson said. He did not provide the number of newly eligible students.<\/p>\n
The stops will eventually be added to an existing bus route, Anderson said. FWISD also plans to add the locations to its official hazardous route list and report the service for state transportation funding.<\/p>\n
Haynes was glad to see the district move from providing transportation to individual students to making it available throughout the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She snapped a photo of the bus stopping on its first day of service. Her husband called several days later to tell her that the elementary bus was waiting in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ecstatic,\u201d Haynes said. “The fast response made me feel hopeful.”<\/p>\n
But she isn\u2019t finished. She wants to be sure that students in her neighborhood who attend other schools or programs of choice have a safe transportation option.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents can\u2019t stop until someone\u2019s listening,\u201d Haynes said.<\/p>\n
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org<\/a> or @matthewsgroi1<\/a>.<\/p>\n Disclosure: FWISD manager Pete Geren leads the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. FWISD manager Laurie George is a member of the Report\u2019s reader advisory council. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/09\/21\/stop-six-parents-pushed-fwisd-for-safer-school-routes-two-years-later-buses-arrived\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fortworthreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=794689&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/09\/21\/stop-six-parents-pushed-fwisd-for-safer-school-routes-two-years-later-buses-arrived\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/fortworthreport.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Matthew Sgroi, Fort Worth Report September 21, 2026 As the sun peeked above the horizon, FWISD mother…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,8257,117],"class_list":["post-444050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-isd","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}