Parents at Vincent Massey Secondary School and Holy Names High School are making one final push to save dedicated School Extra buses.
The City of Windsor cancelled the school extra bus program in favour of upgrades to the overall transit system as part of budget deliberations in February of 2025.
Transit Windsor agreed to keep the buses to Vincent Massey and Holy Names in service until the end of the calendar year.
Parent Darcie Renaud has now started a petition to keep the buses in place. She's calling on the city and the school boards to work together to provide proper transit options.
"We're also calling on the province to properly fund student transportation so the costs aren't offloaded onto families and students," said Renaud. "We really need [the boards] to look at their policy and figure out if they need to start providing transportation, and it would be great to have the city and the school boards publicly work together."
Renaud points out the inequality in the boards' system, where students in Essex County are provided with school buses free of charge to get to school.
"It's a huge inequity, these students in Windsor who go to high school and have to take transit are paying over $800 a year," said Renaud.
Renaud said she fears traffic on city streets surrounding the schools will increase and the transit buses will not be able to handle the influx of students.
"It is a city concern," said Renaud. "It should matter, no matter if you're the school board, the city, the province, whether kids are able to get to school and whether we're putting barriers in front of them to stop them from being able to get to school and graduate high school."
The petition can be found here.
