Students at this Detroit school got free bikes. Here’s how they say it helped attendance.

By Hannah Dellinger for Chalkbeat

Some days, it takes Elyazar Holiday two hours and four buses to travel the 20 miles from his home on the far west side of Detroit to his school on the edge of the east side of the city.

The Detroit school district has limited yellow bus service, and none for most high school students. Like many students in the city, the 17-year-old’s family doesn’t have access to a working car. Riding city buses to Davis Aerospace Technical High School is Holiday’s only option, but – with delays and missed buses – it often proves unreliable.

Last year, Holiday received a gift from his school that made the trek easier: a bicycle.

Principal Michelle Davis gave every student at the school a bike as part of a holistic approach to reducing chronic absenteeism. The bikes were funded through community donations.

Many of the nearly 100 students at Davis Aerospace last year said the bicycles helped them safely get to school by reducing the amount of time they had to walk to school or wait for buses. Others said the bikes gave them a new sense of independence, allowing them to travel around the city with their friends, get to after-school activities or jobs, and get exercise.

While Davis believes the bicycles improved attendance during good weather in the fall and spring, she said it’s only one measure the school is taking to get kids to class.

“Giving the students bikes is just one problem that we’ve solved for,” Davis told Chalkbeat. “What we do intentionally is solve for all of the problems that the kids have, because that has to be our major responsibility.”

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