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Work group finds school district lacks race-linked bus-duration report, defers KPI 8.8 vote
Summary
At its Feb. 4, 2026, NAACP–SDIRC work group meeting, members pressed the school district for bus-ride duration data broken down by race to assess KPI 8.8 (non-discriminatory student transportation). District staff said duration and ridership data exist in separate systems and will follow up; the group deferred a vote and requested a joined dataset or research brief.
Vero Beach-area NAACP and school-district work group members said Feb. 4 that the school district does not currently produce a single report showing how long students ride buses by race, complicating their assessment of KPI 8.8, which asks whether daily student transportation is nondiscriminatory.
"We have the duration by route and tier for every stop," said Dr. Shafty, who summarized the district's response and exhibits. "We have all of the exhibits by school location, by school location, race, count of students using choice, and percentage of students using choice transportation and zone transportation." He said the district follows routing guidance and that some exhibits overlap; he added that the particular duration-by-race query the group sought is not available as a single, joined dataset.
Work group members pressed for data broken down by race, saying policy language alone cannot show whether outcomes are discriminatory. "Without the data to look at the duration, we don't know if it is or isn't," said Michon, a work group member. Participants pointed to prior community concerns that African‑American students sometimes spent longer on buses.
District staff described the data pieces they do have: route sheets with stop times and isolated duration information, and separate reports (Survey 3/FTE) that show ridership and demographics by school. "We can tell you a student rides the bus. We can tell you the demographics of the student that rides the bus. We can tell you the count of riders at a bus stop," Dr. Shafty said, "but what we don't have that you're seeking is the qualifier of duration by race in one report."
Staff offered interim analyses that use address-to-school distances and school-level averages by race. They gave examples showing differences in average miles from home to school at particular schools (for example, Dodgertown's reported enrollment and distance breakdowns discussed during the meeting). Participants noted those measures are imperfect — "as the crow flies" distance and choice enrollment can skew results — and reiterated the need to link route-sheet duration with ridership-demographic data.
Because the requested duration-by-race analysis would require manual triangulation across systems and the district's transportation director was not present to confirm feasibility, the work group did not vote on KPI 8.8. Members requested that the district staff follow up with the transportation director to determine whether a joined dataset or a research brief from the district (or an analyst) can be produced ahead of the next meeting.
The group also agreed to postpone discussion of KPI 8.9, 8.12 and 8.14 to the next meeting and asked that meeting links and materials be distributed earlier to accommodate members in other time zones. Proposed next dates discussed were March 4 and March 18; the organizers said they would confirm availability and possibly extend the meeting length to allow more time for data review.
No formal vote on KPI 8.8 occurred at the Feb. 4 meeting; next steps are a district follow-up to clarify whether the route-duration and ridership datasets can be triangulated and a possible research brief or joined report to be provided to the work group in advance of the next session.
