1 of 2
T. Zamir Grant, 16, a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School
2 of 2
To get to Thomas Jefferson High School, Grant rides two city buses and pays $1.75 per day.
Day has not yet broken when T. Zamir Grant, an amiable 16-year-old with a peach-fuzz mustache, jogs around the corner of First and Federal streets, backpack in hand and bags under his eyes. The time is 6:52 a.m., and he’s running late, but luckily, the Eastbound Ginter Park 32 bus is, too. As he reaches the bus shelter and catches his breath, the bus is creeping past the foot of the Fay Towers in Gilpin Court, one block away.
Grant is a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School, where he’s an open-enrollment student — meaning TJ, as its students call it, is not the high school he is designated to attend based on his Gilpin address. Instead, he is one of the 150 out-of-zone students who applied to attend the Near West End school through the district’s open-enrollment program, making it one of the most sought-after destinations in the division. Despite recent state accreditation woes, TJ is tops among the city’s five comprehensive high schools in advanced degrees awarded and graduation rate, according to Virginia Department of Education data.
Grant’s zoned school is John Marshall High. Members of his family attended the North Side school, as well as Armstrong High and the old John F. Kennedy High before it closed. As an eighth grader leaving Martin Luther King Jr. Middle, he decided he wanted to forge his own path.
“I heard so much about TJ — ‘TJ is this, TJ is that.’ When I went there, I felt its spirit,” Grant says. “Mainly, when I decided I wanted to come to TJ, [it was because] I wanted to do something new.”
Richmond Public Schools (RPS) requires open-enrollment students to provide their own transportation. For Grant, this means rising at 6 a.m., skipping breakfast and riding two city buses.
When the GRTC bus screeches to a halt at the corner, Grant boards and flashes his ID, securing a discounted day pass. Ahead is an eight-minute-or-so ride to Eighth and Marshall streets, where he will hop out, wait another five minutes, then catch the Westbound Monument 1 bus at approximately 7:05 a.m. From there, a 20-minute ride to the corner of Malvern and Monument drops him a block from school.
He settles into a seat, still panting as he explains what happens if he misses this first bus, as he did yesterday. “All hell breaks loose,” he says. Grant must wait15 minutes for the 32 to circle back. By then, he’ll have missed the Monument 1. Instead, he must catch a Westbound 6up Broad Street, then hustle the two blocks to school. The delay means he could be marked tardy for his first-period English class.
Tommy Kranz, the school division’s assistant superintendent in charge of operations, says busing all open-enrollment students to their out-of-zone schools would “significantly increase” the division’s transportation expenses. Aside from purchasing more buses, the division would have to fill hard-to-staff driving positions in an expanded fleet, he says.
“I wish that there was all the money available and the staffing was there to provide every child with door-to-door stops,” Kranz says. “It’s just not practical with what our operations are each day.”
However, it’s an issue the newly seated Richmond School Board could take up if it so chooses, Kranz adds. Grant has asked the board to do just that. He believes the current policy puts students whose families simply can’t provide rides to out-of-zone schools at a disadvantage.
“Not every student’s parent has a car, so they can’t drive their child to school every day,” Grant says. “It’s not fair that I have to come out of my pocket to getto school.”
Dawn Page, who represents the South Richmond 8th District and serves as board chairwoman, says transportation hurdles for students are a “budgetary issue” and the board will “definitely revisit the policy” concerning open-enrollment students.
“We should have equal access to all of our schools,” Page says.
It’s unclear how many students ride GRTC buses to school; RPS doesn’t track it. One thing is certain, though: Bus fares add up. The all-day pass costs Grant $1.75. That’s $8.75 a week. Over the course of the 180-day school year, that’s more than $300 spent on fares. When Grant doesn’t have the money, he asks members of his Church Hill congregation to chip in, or he makes a plea on social media. As a last resort, he has reached out to the Richmond Police Department’s Sgt. Carol Adams, who has put him in touch with a school resource officer to help him out.
He’s got it covered this week, he says, fingering through a pouch of passes he pulls out of his pocket as the bus hurtles up Monument Avenue. But next week may be tight.
