Janeth Zarate is a freshman at Fremont High School who wakes up at 6 a.m. to get to school on time. On any normal day, she takes VTA’s 255 bus, but for the past two weeks service has stopped due to a historic union worker strike.
VTA’s operator union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, has been on strike since March 10, halting all bus and light rail services. The stoppage has thrown Zarate and about 460 Fremont Union High School District students who regularly take buses to and from school into a state of chaos.
District parents and students living in North Sunnyvale said the journey to school has been a stressor for years, but the strike has taken it to the next level.
“The lack of transportation from VTA hinders kids from going to school … This results in anxiety for the kids and parents, too,” North Sunnyvale resident Evelyn Castillo Profeta told San José Spotlight, adding her daughter was late to class during the strike’s first week due to lack of transportation.
To combat the problem, the school district contracted temporary buses to fill the gap, but they only go to a handful of stops. Zarate said she used the temporary bus on Tuesday, but still had to be dropped off at the bus stop by her mother, who usually can’t drive her to school because of work.
“I just kinda wanna make my commute to school a bit more tranquil,” Zarate told San José Spotlight.
District spokesperson Rachel Zlotziver said the district surveyed student VTA bus pass holders during the strike’s first week. She said of the 200 student responses, 13 students missed school March 10 for lack of transportation and 45 students said they might have to miss school later in the week.
The first four days of the contract cost $27, 816, or $6,954 per day, with the option to add more days, according to Zlotziver. The contract includes eight bus rides every day, two buses running two routes twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Zlotziver said each bus can only seat 55 people, so the district is encouraging families to make other transportation arrangements if they can.
“Our partnership with VTA has proven to be very successful over many years, and we are hopeful that those services will be restored soon,” Zlotziver told San José Spotlight.
Fremont Union High School District serves about 9,343 students and covers multiple cities, including Sunnyvale, Cupertino and parts of San Jose. The district has no school bus system and subsidizes bus passes for students living in three North Sunnyvale ZIP codes, all north of El Camino Real. Some student commutes can be as far as 5 miles away, crossing Highway 101 and the Caltrain tracks.
An ongoing problem
The district’s transportation needs existed long before the strike. North Sunnyvale resident May Thiers has been struggling to find ways to get her 10th grade son to Fremont High School. Her son swims and plays water polo after school, and the high school’s pool has been broken, so the swim team practices at Cupertino High School and the water polo team is at the Washington Park pool. To get him everywhere requires two hours of driving.
While the district’s temporary buses will help get Thiers’ son to school in the morning, she said it won’t help him get home or to either of his after school activities. Even before the strike and the high school’s pool broke, she said there were no buses to bring him home after practice, since VTA buses don’t run past 5 p.m.
“For the north side of Sunnyvale, the transportation to Fremont High School or that area has always been an issue,” Thiers told San José Spotlight. “In our neighborhood, a lot of people feel the same feeling, but hopefully the school district will hear us eventually.”
Trustee Pat Carpio-Aguilar represents North Sunnyvale and said students from her district have had a longer commute for decades, leading to quality of life differences for students living further north. Students lose more sleep and are discouraged from joining after school activities because they lack transportation, while students who live closer to their schools don’t have to worry about travel as much.
The district’s enrollment projections for its five high schools show Fremont High School is the only one expected to increase. Carpio-Aguilar said she wants the district to allocate more resources toward its North Sunnyvale students and consider the option of opening another high school further north.
“This impacts their sense of belonging at school,” Carpio-Aguilar told San José Spotlight. “You are carrying around a lot of unneeded burden as a student because the district is not serving you as they should, so the long-term solution is a high school up in northern Sunnyvale and that’s the third rail that nobody wants to talk about.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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