The sidewalks outside Baltimore School for the Arts in Mount Vernon bustled with students joking around at 4 p.m. after a long day in early October.

Some head to idling cars for their rides home, but an unusual companion joined freshman Noah Smallwood for his walk to the bus stop — Baltimore City Councilman Paris Gray.

“So if the [CityLink] Purple doesn’t come, how do you get home?” Gray asked Smallwood as they approached the intersection of Cathedral and West Centre streets at 4:06 p.m.

It might run late, Smallwood replied, but it’s rare it just doesn’t come. And, he added, there are other buses that may not get him all the way home, but close.

“If all else fails,” he continued, “I can call my mom or my stepdad to come get me.”

This academic year, some local lawmakers like Gray have been shadowing students on their trips to and from school to get a moment-by-moment sense of what it takes to arrive by the first bell and get home after the last one using Baltimore’s transit network.

Thanks to school choice, the treks can span an hour or more, requiring predawn wake-ups or multiple transfers between lines. Many students struggle to get to school on time, a Baltimore Banner investigation found, and first period grades sometimes suffer because of it.

“I’ve always been very curious about this question, ‘Why don’t we have [dedicated] transportation for our children to and from school?” said Bemi Byrd, transportation organizer with the No Boundaries Coalition, a West Baltimore nonprofit focused on community organizing and civic engagement.

This fall was the third time that Byrd organized a campaign she calls “Put Your Seat Where Your Mouth Is” — an invitation to lawmakers to not just talk a big game about public transit, but experience a bit of life without a car. But this was the first time she has made the effort to connect policymakers with students.

Walking down Cathedral Street, Gray asked Smallwood why he doesn’t hop on a southbound bus to transfer to the Purple. He liked walking, he replied, and during rush hour it’s sometimes just as fast as the taking a bus.

At 4:22 pm, they reached the stop at Fayette and St. Paul streets. Smallwood checked the mobile Transit app and saw that, likely due to the recent cyberattack on the MTA, it wasn’t displaying when the next Purple would arrive.

That day, the wait wasn’t long. At 4:30 p.m., Gray and Smallwood were headed west.

‘These are our kids’

Days later it was Councilman Antonio Glover’s turn.

He met two siblings at 6:55 am in McElderry Park, roughly seven miles from their daily destination: Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Western High School, which share a campus near Roland Park.

The bus only got them most of the way there, he wrote on social media the next day, sharing that the students’ commute to school ended at 7:55 am with a walk up Falls Road.

“These are our kids,” wrote Glover, waking up early “not to hang out or play around,” but start tough commutes to get to Advanced Placement classes that demand intense focus.

“And yet, we expect them to start each day in the dark, navigating unreliable or incomplete transit, often in the cold, sometimes in the rain, and we call that normal. We cannot continue to accept this as ‘just the way it is.’”

Byrd organized a small town hall Oct. 23 as part of the campaign, inviting students who participated to talk about their experiences with parents and other advocates. It was a chance to keep building community around the issue, Byrd said, and not dwell on the problem but think about ways to make the transit experience better — things like enforcement on cars that use dedicated bus lanes or adding more shelters at stops.

One student, who didn’t have any lawmakers join his ride but attended the town hall, raised his hand and shared that his daily commute to East Baltimore’s Patterson High School from Cherry Hill typically takes him about 90 minutes. Some parents gasped.

Then, Byrd asked him what his first class of the day is. AP Psychology, he replied. The gasps got louder.

Most decisions impacting Baltimore’s public transit happen at the state level, meaning City Council members may not make the most important converts to Byrd’s campaign. But they do have influence, she told those present, and can be “part of the mouthpiece” that amplifies the stories that lead to change. City Hall already is getting more organized around such transportation issues.

As the Purple bus rumbles westbound, Smallwood shows Gray how the Transit app works on his phone, and the pair chat about bus-riding pet peeves like cleanliness or when people don’t use headphones.

They pique the interest of a young person sitting across from them wearing a Poly sweatshirt. He sneaks glances away from the paperback he’s reading.

Gray catches his eyes, and asks him about his school commute. Usually about 90 minutes, he responds, a mix of light rail and bus.

Later, Gray said it left him “admiring our Baltimore City youth, especially kids like Noah [Smallwood] who take that ride each and every day and still stay committed.”

It also was a call to action, he said, to keep advocating for more resources that will uplift not just students, but create a better transit experience for all who depend on it.

Smallwood and Gray stepped off the bus at 5:12 p.m. near the county line on Frederick Road. They took a picture and shook hands. Smallwood headed home to start some on his homework, and Gray turned toward a nearby parking lot, where his car was waiting.

Earlier that afternoon, he had taken an Uber to the School for the Arts to make sure he got there on time.