Families in Buda who rely on Hays CISD to get their deaf children to and from a Texas School for the Deaf bus stop are now doing that driving themselves, after the district quietly ended the service ahead of the 2026-2027 school year. The decision has forced parents like Tyler Anderson to rearrange work schedules, and some have turned to Uber just to make sure their kids aren't left waiting alone.
A Route Cut Over Cost and Low Ridership
According to KXAN, Hays CISD said it would no longer provide the voluntary transportation service for the 2026-2027 school year, telling the station it never received funding to run the route in the first place. The district reported that the bus averaged just 39% full and cost $86,000 to operate during the previous school year, with ridership described as low among the students who actually needed the service.
District spokesperson Tim Savoy said Hays CISD could not justify spending $86,000 on the route after making other cuts elsewhere, and said the district had to focus its limited resources on students actually enrolled in Hays CISD. Savoy added that parents who choose to send their children to the Texas School for the Deaf are effectively opting out of Hays CISD, and that the district had kept the route running as long as it did because it helped children.
Budget Pressure Behind the Decision
Hays CISD cited inflation and a stagnant state basic student funding allotment as drivers behind the move, framing it as part of $12 million in districtwide cuts that also led to staff layoffs and larger class sizes this past spring, the station's report notes. Community Impact previously reported that the Hays CISD board approved $12.25 million in preliminary budget cuts for fiscal year 2026-27 at a March meeting; the two figures differ slightly, and it is not clear from available reporting whether they describe the same final total.
The district says the legal obligation here is narrower than some families assume. Hays CISD told the station that transportation must be specifically required in a student's Individualized Education Program by a Hays CISD Admission, Review and Dismissal committee before the district is obligated to provide it, and that none of the students riding the Buda route had been placed at the Texas School for the Deaf through such a decision. Under federal rules, the IDEA regulation's definition of transportation covers travel to and from school and specialized equipment like adapted buses when required for special transportation, according to the U.S. Department of Education — though that definition alone doesn't resolve whether any specific student is entitled to a specific route.
Why Families Chose the School in the First Place
Hays CISD operates its own Regional Day School for the Deaf, established in 2014 and currently enrolling 18 students across designated elementary, middle and high school campuses, the district told the station. But Anderson said enrolling his son there was never a real option: his son, who is nonverbal and deaf, has attended the Texas School for the Deaf since sixth grade and is thriving socially and in advanced classes. Anderson said the family specifically chose a school where adults were fluent in sign language and where his son could have deaf mentors and a larger peer group.
The Texas School for the Deaf sits south of downtown Austin, about 14 miles from the Buda parking lot where the Hays CISD bus used to pick students up. The school told KXAN by email that it regularly transports about 60 students from two bus stops located within Hays CISD boundaries, and said it was unaware of other districts discontinuing similar transportation that school year. The school declined an on-camera interview with the station.
Parents Left Covering the Gap
Anderson said Hays CISD leaders told him the district would not provide the service because his son is not a Hays CISD student, and that the district announced the route's discontinuation just two weeks before school began. He said he wanted the district to meet with affected families before pulling the service rather than springing the change on them so close to the start of the year.
Now Anderson's wife, also a teacher in San Marcos, has to drop their son at the bus stop before heading to work, and Anderson sometimes picks him up at a fast-food restaurant so his high-school-senior son has air conditioning while he waits, since the commute can make Anderson 45 minutes late. He said his family found a temporary solution, but noted that other parents have resorted to Uber and similar arrangements because they can't always be present when the bus drops their children off. Hays CISD said it previously paid for this transportation for students not enrolled in the district whose parents chose the Texas School for the Deaf, out of more than 80 students who attended the school last year, half of whom needed service from home to the designated stop.
A Statewide Funding Squeeze
The dispute in Buda echoes a broader strain on Texas school transportation budgets. A Click2Houston report found that state funds covered only 15% of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD's transportation costs last year, even though Texas reimburses districts $1 per mile for general education bus travel and up to $1.13 per mile for special education travel. A 2025 state law added five cents more per special education mile, which amounted to roughly $160,000 more for that district — a boost advocates say still hasn't kept pace with rising costs.
That same report described Cypress-Fairbanks ISD eliminating nearly 80 bus routes in 2024, only to restore them after protests and 33 auto-pedestrian crashes, and noted that Austin ISD had to reverse a centralized bus hub system and bring back neighborhood stops, except for high schoolers, after parents pushed back. Glenna Wright-Gallo, quoted by School Transportation News, said flat state funding combined with rising expenses effectively amounts to a budget cut for districts across the state — a dynamic that mirrors what Hays CISD families are now navigating in Buda.
