Baltimore has a school problem.

It‘s not among the ones you might be thinking of, like test scores below where they should be or students whose family dynamics find their way into the classroom.

It‘s the basic task of getting kids to school on time.

My Baltimore Banner colleagues Liz Bowie and Greg Morton documented this failure by Baltimore City Public Schools in February.

Three months later, transportation reporter Danny Zawodny’s follow-up story shows just how difficult improvements would be, and how little interest there is in trying. Morton’s story on Friday revealed that no one even knows exactly how many students rely on the system.

It‘s like waiting for a bus in the rain, only to see them repeatedly pass your stop. It makes you wonder who’s driving.

Could Baltimore’s public schools open early for kids who need more time to get to class, or limit school choice to acknowledge a less-than-reliable transit system?

“These suggestions are possible, but not without an evaluation of bell times on a school-by-school basis to ensure that transportation needs can be met for all students,” Lynette K. Washington, chief operating officer for city schools, wrote in an email.

Could the Maryland Transit Administration do more to adjust its services to fix the problem?

“It is important to note that MTA receives ridership information daily and bases decisions on that information,” said Veronica Battisti, the agency’s director of marketing and communications.

Could the Maryland State Department of Education set some minimum standards?

“To my knowledge, we don’t have any regulation like that in Maryland,” said Gabriel Rose, the agency’s director of pupil transportation and emergency management.

The Banner discovered that up to 25,000 city schools students rely on public transit every school day, but 1 in 4 buses they try to board doesn’t show up on time or at all. Getting to school late reverberates, setting up more students for failure.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Down the interstate, Washington, D.C., has a similar challenge. Yet it ranks fourth in the nation for the best school commutes, according to Solient, an education staff firm. Baltimore landed 23rd out of 100 on the list.

The Banner, however, found that the average trip to school on Baltimore mass transit takes an average 40 minutes — 10 minutes more than in D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland or any other city rated by Solient.

Baltimore is a logistical nightmare. It is 92 square miles served by a state transit system with historic underinvestment. Families can choose any city school for their children, making crosstown journeys a tangle of routes and timetables.

In Washington, about 48,000 students rely on Metro bus routes and subway lines. They all can get Kids Ride Free passes, paid for by the District.

DC School Connect provides bus and van service in wards with limited transit, and the city spends millions on a training program for aides to help students navigate their commutes.

It‘s not perfect. One 2023 study found that only 30,000 eligible students picked up their passes.

Here’s a key difference.

The D.C. Department of Transportation considers getting students to school on time one of its jobs, and it works directly with families and other agencies.

That partnership goes beyond meeting before the start of the school year. Representatives of the D.C. transportation department, District schools and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or Metro, have quarterly meetings to solve transportation problems.

Sure, Washington is a smaller city geographically, served by more robust bus and rail networks. It‘s also a more walkable, bikeable city.

Compare this with Baltimore’s school transportation collaboration.

Baltimore’s school system provides the MTA link to families trying to figure out the best route and hands out student passes. And while Lynette K. Washington, the system’s chief operating officer, said through a spokesperson that students get training, she didn’t offer details.

The Baltimore City Department of Transportation is focused on kids who walk to school, even though its website describes one of its roles as helping students use public transit.

And the MTA, which provides 185 “school trippers” daily — buses lined up with school bell times but open to the public — says it covers the estimated $2 million annual cost.

Rather than acknowledge it needs to do more, the MTA is pushing back on The Banner’s investigation.

“The metrics referenced in the previous Banner article were based on modeling and do not align with MTA’s data,” Battisti said.

For the record, The Banner used enrollment data to estimate how many students might take each route to school — because no one is counting. Other findings, such as how often MTA buses showed up on time, used real-time location data.

Baltimore can‘t match what D.C. does, nor should it try. Different cities, different solutions.

But it can acknowledge the problem and join the conversation about how to do better.

The Banner is offering a good place to start, a town hall on Monday on fixing student transportation problems. While a school board member is on the panel, no one from the school system administration nor the MTA has agreed to participate.

Instead, MTA Administrator Holly Arnold and schools CEO Sonja Santelises are sidestepping.

In January, Arnold said this: “I am not sure I am the right person to answer that question.”

Santelises was no better: “I will not allow the state of Maryland to abdicate its historical decision to underinvest in a system of transportation that works for the entire public.”

This will be hard. If it weren’t, someone would have figured it out by now.

A failing school transportation system contributes to the most damning statistic on Baltimore schools, a 54% chronic absenteeism rate in 2023 — twice the state average.

Getting students to school on time must be a top priority for all agencies involved, for the city and the state.

Someone has to step up and get this bus on the road.