Navigating Baltimore’s complicated middle and high school choice process can be tough. Students and their families can spend months trying to ensure that they choose a city school best suited to meet their academic needs, without knowing the logistical challenges of getting to and from campus using public transit.

This tool allows you to compare routes from your neighborhood to any Baltimore public school.

A Banner investigation found that nearly every Baltimore middle and high school enrolls students from all corners of the city. Long, unreliable commutes on public transit make it nearly impossible for thousands of kids to consistently make it to school on time. Baltimore is the only district in Maryland that does not guarantee children a ride on a yellow school bus after elementary school.

As part of our analysis, we modeled routes from every census tract to every middle and high school. That analysis is the basis for this story: a trip-planning tool designed to help students make informed decisions on which school is best for them.

We recommend that you pay special attention to the on-time percentage and time for the next bus. The higher the on-time percentage, the more often the bus will arrive when you expect it. Shorter times between buses means a late bus or missed connection is less likely to derail an entire trip.

This tool focuses on the morning trip to school, when a Banner analysis shows about 1 in 4 buses will not arrive “on time,” a nine-minute window from two minutes before a bus’s scheduled arrival to seven minutes after. Trips home that follow the same route are generally less frequent and even more unreliable than they are in the morning. One in three buses misses the “on time” window in the afternoon, according to our analysis.

Want to know how we did this? Read our methodology. For every details of our data analysis, visit our GitHub.

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.