Created by Anja K. Herman in River Forest, Illinois

There are a plethora of things to associate with the color yellow. Daffodils, several varieties of fruit, or even the sun, if you need a list. But as a proud nerd I must admit that the thing I most associate with the color yellow is school, and school buses more specifically. Some may call that association elementary (pun intended), but I feel it’s rather appropriate because of what both schools and buses can mean, and have meant, for me.

Even when I moaned about it in the midst of final exam seasons and mountains of assignments, I always knew that school was worth investing in, and loving, because everything I learned there was knowledge that powered my future. Powering that future, of course, started with physically arriving, courtesy of the golden school bus that, no matter what horror the Midwestern weather threatened to unleash upon it, chugged along each day to stop in front of my house.

Buses themselves, especially electric buses that have been rapidly growing in popularity, represent the same future that bright-eyed students are building: one that’s built through technological advancements and sustainability.

As policymakers and the public at large consider investing in electric buses, accessibility for disabled students like me must be centered. Doing so will ensure that we build strong communities, and emphasize choice, to achieve a more accessible future for all.

To most people, field trips stick out positively against the unremarkable monotony of most school days. Unfortunately for me, these field trips served as reminders that administrative incompetence and inaccessibility kept me from feeling fully included and a part of my community. Oftentimes, the buses that were chartered by the district for the field trips weren’t accessible. The most likely culprit of inaccessibility was not having a wheelchair lift, though I was sometimes put through the heartbreaking bait and switch of a lift seeming operational, and the crushing weight of realizing it was broken, as all of my classmates scampered on the bus without me.

The “solution” for this problem that was found by the adults in charge was to order a separate bus that was thankfully (and rightly) physically accessible, but cut off access to my community of peers that I would be going on the field trip with. While in some instances my complaints on this matter were heard, and I was able to bring a few friends on the bus with me to create a makeshift version of the social experience, that was a rarity, and so I spent most of those trips on a bus alone or with one of my teachers.

I often felt like the bus was driving me to a sort of metaphorical “outcast” land, instead of the traditional field trip destination. I was an impatient passenger, wondering what else I was missing.

In the winter of my seventh-grade year, I had the chance to find out. At this point in my tweendom, I had recently transitioned to using a wheelchair, which was bad news for my family’s sedan, which couldn’t hold my device. Luckily for me, my middle school was willing to allow me to utilize school sponsored bus transport each way, which was a service offered to all the disabled kids in the district.

I can still remember the night before my transport was scheduled to start, as an uncommon mixture of excitement and dread flooded through me. Would this finally be my chance to have the field trip experience I wanted? Or would inaccessibility obscure my future once again? The question commanding my thoughts when I went to bed was really: how, or if, I fit into the future of what my community was building.

I was overjoyed to find out “outcast land” wasn’t a stop on my morning jaunts to school. Instead, I got to experience what an asset full accessibility was when building a community. On this bus, the wheelchair ramps were always accessible and always operational. This might not seem like a big deal when you look at just the infrastructure, but its meaning became clearer to me once I realized what that access facilitated: an ability to participate not just like everyone else, but with everyone else. Like most seventh graders, I would’ve much rather faced the everyday stress of exams, or the joy of catching up with a friend after a busy weekend, than the panic of being “stuck”—physically or socially—due to inaccessibility. On the bus I took in the morning, I wasn’t stuck anymore, the conversations and connections with my peers-turned- friends soared.

Inaccessibility is a literal and physical barrier to community building for all of us. Even if an individual doesn’t need to utilize a specific accessibility tool, like a ramp or a lap seatbelt, we all can benefit from accessibility, because we all can benefit from having more people in our communities and on our buses as players in our collective future.

I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t mention one crucial thing when discussing the importance of accessibility for the nation’s school buses. Just like communities and futures, accessibility isn’t one size fits all. While I need a ramp to participate, another student may have sensory concerns about the fluorescent lighting buses use or need to access an alternate form of bus safety instructions—like videos or a picture-based guide—due to differences in processing. On a district level, conversations should be had between students, administrators and bus manufacturing companies to discuss how best to accommodate varied accessibility needs. I’m not suggesting that these conversations are simple, or that they happen overnight, but they must happen. Conversations like these—or even the broader one that I hope everyone, not just policymakers, start to have about the importance of accessibility on electric buses—are central to ensuring that these modern and beneficial technologies protect the future of all riders.

Anja was a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, class of 2024.

Hear from more youth voices in Students for Electric School Buses.