HopSkipDrive and the Future of School Transportation

On the latest episode of the State of Choice podcast, Ed Tarnowski and Katherine Schultz welcomed Trish Donahue, Senior Vice President of Legal and Policy at HopSkipDrive, to talk about a topic that’s critical but often overlooked in school choice conversations: transportation.

Trish shared her background in education law and policy and how it led her to HopSkipDrive.

“From a personal space, choice has always been really important to me,” Donahue said. “Since I started as a legal intern at the League of Charter Schools, we were saying, well, choice isn’t really choice if you can’t get there.”

HopSkipDrive was created to solve that very problem. The company started in 2014 when three working moms realized there needed to be a rideshare service designed specifically for kids, something safe and reliable.

“While we largely started with that consumer-facing focus, since that time, we’ve transitioned to serving school districts and county child welfare agencies,” Donahue explained.

Since its founding in 2014, HopSkipDrive has supported more than 10,000 schools across 17 states and arranged over 5 million rides for students.

As education choice policies like ESAs (education savings accounts) expand across the country, the question of how students physically access new schooling options becomes increasingly important. Ed pointed out that families in rural areas often ask, “How is choice going to help us if we’re too far from a school?”

Trish responded that HopSkipDrive is built to meet families where they are. “Over 53% of parents today get their kids to school in a private vehicle,” Donahue said. “We’re trying to provide another transportation solution that is actually going to meet families where they’re at.”

Katherine Schultz highlighted the exciting developments happening in her home state of Texas, where a major ESA program could soon become law. “The average tuition in Texas for a private school is about $9,500,” she explained. “With an ESA award of approximately $10,500, that leaves room for families to afford not only tuition but also things like uniforms—and importantly, transportation.”

Programs like HopSkipDrive provide a real, practical solution for parents who want to exercise school choice but need help getting their children to a school that’s a better fit.

Trish emphasized that transportation needs to be part of the larger conversation about educational access.

“You can increase choice and increase access on paper,” Donahue said, “but if people don’t actually have the mechanism for getting there, it’s not going to move the needle.”

She also pointed to data showing that inaccessibility to transportation is tied to chronic absenteeism, which directly affects academic performance.

Beyond school commutes, HopSkipDrive also supports extracurricular activities and concurrent enrollment programs.

“People use us for extracurriculars all the time,” Donahue said. “Our CEO needed a way to get her son to karate at three o’clock on a Thursday. That’s really the inception of the company.”

In addition to its core service, HopSkipDrive is innovating with technology. Trish introduced RouteWise AI, their new platform that helps districts optimize transportation planning by analyzing ridership data, available drivers, and other factors.

“Districts have seen savings of up to 20% of their annual operating budgets,” she shared, adding that this also helps reduce emissions and better allocate resources to education.

As the conversation wrapped up, Trish left listeners with a reminder: “Let’s just keep making transportation part of the conversation. If kids are taking six-city buses to get to school, they’re probably not really set up for success that day.”

For more information, visit hopskipdrive.com, and listen to the full podcast conversation.