Family Responsibility Zones

In January of 2025, as an answer to the ongoing bus driver shortage, Durham Public Schools implemented Family Responsibility Zones for 21 elementary schools. In accordance with NC State law, these are zones of up to a 1 and half mile radius around a school in which school bus transportation is not offered (exceptions made for relevant IEPs and other special cases). Many surrounding districts, such as Wake and Chapel Hill-Carrboro have previously adopted similar policies, however Durham County has historically offered school bus transportation to all students in a school’s attendance boundary.

While this policy was under review by the Board of Education, I was tasked with spearheading the infrastructure evaluation and mapping process, in order to determine the boundaries of the zone for each school. The spirit of the policy and our implementation strategy centered around defining zones within which it would be feasible for able-bodied students to walk to school. This meant evaluating the pedestrian infrastructure in the area surrounding each of the 21 schools with a fine tooth comb, ensuring students would be not be required to cross high speed roads without necessary signals or walk around high volume roads with no sidewalks. We did this using a combination online maps, data from the City of Durham website, and in-person site visits.

The result of this analysis was a GIS map of each zone, which our team passed on to the Board of Education for final review and approval. These maps are now available publicly on the Durham Public Schools website, along with more information about Family Responsibility Zones.