DAYTON — A group of community activists wants to see change after saying kids are put in danger too often when they’re simply trying to get to and from school.
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This comes two weeks after 18-year-old Alfred Hale, a Dunbar High School student, was shot and killed near the RTA hub in downtown Dayton while transferring buses.
Since then, there has been blame thrown around, but not many agreed-upon solutions have been heard since then.
Community activists said that it has to change.
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“We really need to come together and get all stakeholders involved in solutions,” Jamica Garrison, co-founder of Neighborhoods Over Politics, said.
Garrison was joined at a press conference Friday by representatives of Black Lives Matter Dayton and Racial Justice Now.
As reported on News Center 7 at 5:00, the groups believe Dayton’s adult leadership is failing and young people are paying the price.
“It’s going to take everyone to come up with evidence-based strategies and practices that these children deserve,” Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, with Racial Justice Now, said.
Hale was shot and killed on April 4 on his way to school.
It’s not the only recent gunfire near the spot where thousands of high schoolers transfer. On April 1, a shooting at Main and Fourth Streets injured a 46-year-old man, and last October, another man died after a shooting in front of the Boost Mobile store next to the RTA hub.
City and state leaders held a news conference after the shooting, proposing changes because they believe the hub is not the right place for high school students.
The activists said this is too important to rush.
“When it comes to what we’re trying to accomplish, we do want a coalition of stakeholders from the city of Dayton,” Carlos Buford, founder of Black Lives Matter Dayton, said.
RTA leaders said they’ve tried to help in a situation they didn’t expect to be put in.
“We even put extra buses out every afternoon to make sure we can handle the rush of students, but, you know, we can’t be a solution to a school’s transportation needs,” Bob Ruzinsky, CEO of Greater Dayton RTA, said.
Dayton Police Department data showed that calls for service in the area of the RTA hub increased by almost 1,000 since 2022. It was in August of that year that Dayton Public Schools (DPS) began using RTA to bus high school students to their schools.
Assistant Dayton Police Chief Eric Henderson said it only takes a few misbehaving teens or badly-intentioned adults to create a dangerous mix.
“I think that’s what we need to try to deal with to try and limit the interactions of our youth with adults when they should focus on going to school,” Henderson said.
Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein told News Center 7 that in 2022, neither they nor RTA leaders were given a heads up that DPS would start putting students on RTA buses downtown.
As reported on News Center 7 at 6:00, Dickstein said the safest transportation for high school students is traditional yellow buses. She also said that hundreds of unsupervised teens being dumped in the middle of the city’s business district makes it tough to attract and retain companies in the area.
“You know, this is our economic engine and it needs to be strong and healthy,” Dickstein said.
She also said the central business district generates the revenue to pay for 75 percent of city services for every neighborhood.
Dickstein still believes the city, school, and RTA leaders can find a solution for everyone. One of those might be using RTA limited service routes to bus high school students.
“Routes open to the public, but they were specifically designed to better meet the needs of school transportation,” Ruzinsky described. “So they went more from schools to neighborhoods.”
City leaders said there have been exploratory talks with RTA and school district representatives about a limited service model that would avoid downtown for transfer, but it has not materialized into a solid plan.
School board leaders have said finances are an issue since the state of Ohio requires them to transport all charter and private school students as well.
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