Each morning, thousands of Baltimore students board city buses and embark on trips to school that can stretch over an hour and involve multiple transfers.

But exactly how many students? No one knows.

Baltimore City Public Schools, the only district in Maryland that does not offer middle and high schoolers yellow bus service, does not collect data on how many of its students rely on public transportation. Neither does the Maryland Transit Administration, the state agency that runs the buses and trains students take to school.

Experts say the lack of clarity makes it all but impossible for school officials and transit planners to find solutions for the thousands of kids who struggle to get to class on time every day. They point to a simple move that could be a first step: surveying students about how they get to school.

“Without really understanding the extent of the problem and understanding how many kids are coming from different places, we don’t know how hard it would be” to improve their commutes, said Julia Burdick-Will, a transit researcher and associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

Baltimore‘s universal middle and high school choice system allows students to attend school anywhere in the city so they can pursue an education that aligns with their goals. Schools with specialized programs like the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute attract students from virtually every corner of the city.

School choice has also created a complicated, ever-changing network of journeys to and from school. A Banner analysis found that students took over 4,000 unique routes to school last year and spent about twice as long on public transit as their peers in Baltimore County spend on yellow buses. Not having a safe, reliable ride to school makes kids more likely to be tardy or absent, limits their academic success and alters the course their futures.

Burdick-Will said a survey could help the school system and MTA understand the complexity of students’ routes and identify students who are struggling to make it to class on time. That kind of information, she said, could help the agencies collaborate to make improvements, like adjustments to school start times.

While the school district and MTA have collaborated to distribute free transit passes to roughly 25,000 students, officials don’t know how many students aren’t using them or why not. MTA operators don’t consistently require students to swipe their passes as they get on a bus or train because doing so would slow down boarding.

Suburban school districts routinely survey families about how their children get to school; they need that information to run efficient school bus systems.

City Schools CEO Sonja Santelises acknowledged in a January interview that unreliable transit disrupts learning and said the school system would be willing to survey students on how they get to school.

“I would say that that is probably something that we could — should — restart,” she said. “What often happens is, you know, along the way, things get deprioritized.”

Santelises said that the school system is often inundated with requests for new surveys. A school system spokesperson could not say whether such a survey had been conducted in the past.

The school system has yet to commit to a student transportation survey. Instead, a spokesperson said in a statement, “We plan to meet with students to capture meaningful, in-depth perspectives about their commutes.”

“By better understanding the transportation methods our students use — and the challenges they face — we aim to identify opportunities to work with city agencies and community partners to improve access, enhance safety, and address key areas of concern," the statement said.

The school system didn’t specify when that information would be collected or how students would be selected for those conversations.

Experts say that without a plan to capture responses from a group that is representative of the entire student body, the results might not be as meaningful.

“It is really important to do it right, and it’s really tough,” said Gregory Newmark, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at Morgan State University. “People do not understand the complexity of a transportation survey.”

He expressed disappointment in the district’s approach, but acknowledged that the effort was better than nothing.

Baltimore City Council members have recently taken an interest in student commutes, citing The Banner’s reporting.

District 1 Councilman Mark Parker, who serves as vice chair of the Education, Youth and Older Adults Committee, suggested that the school system could collect data on student transit habits from the text alerts sent to parents when kids don’t arrive on time.

At a hearing in March, City Council President Zeke Cohen suggested revisiting the memorandum of understanding between MTA and City Schools.

The MTA surveys its riders periodically, but the information it collects is not focused on student commutes.

“We’re public transit. We do our surveys for everyone,” MTA Administrator Holly Arnold said in a January interview.

The agency estimates that students make up about 15% of all commuters, but that is a guess based on the roughly 25,000 transit passes that the school system distributes. Some who receive passes will catch a ride with parents, walk to school or use private transportation.

Arnold said MTA draws on enrollment data, ridership estimates from sensors placed on buses and cellphone data to assess how well their service is working. MTA officials also stressed that though they often make changes to bus schedules to accommodate Baltimore students, they have to make sure that adult riders remain a priority.

“MTA is not a school bus system. We are a public transit system, and we legally are required to have access to everyone,” said Arnold, who also cited a federal regulation that prevents transit systems from operating routes exclusively for students.

Neither the MTA nor the school system considers getting kids to school its sole responsibility, its leaders have said.

The result, Burdick-Will said, is that “it’s both everybody’s problem and nobody’s problem.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Liz Bowie contributed to this article.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Julia Burdick-Will is an associate sociology professor at the Johns Hopkins University.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.