The car ride to school isn’t much fun.
From hustling tired kids out the door in the morning to forgotten lunches—not to mention sitting in traffic—it’s a task that most parents dread. And it’s made more challenging by the fact that the school day doesn’t exactly line up with the workday, often leaving parents scrambling at the end of the day too.
But according to a new survey, the school commute isn’t just annoying or inconvenient. It’s also a costly time thief.
K12, an online education provider, surveyed 1,000 American parents of K–12 children between May 12 and May 18, 2026, to understand how the daily school commute impacts families.
It found that parents are losing a staggering amount of both time and money on daily trips to and from school.
What did the study find?
For starters, U.S. parents spend 296 hours on the daily commute to and from their kids’ schools each year. That comes out to around 12 full days, or 8.2 hours each week.
That’s a pretty large chunk of time that could be spent on work, managing the household, or even catching up on sleep.
Financially, the school commute is draining families, too.
On average, parents spend $2,860 on the daily school routine, including getting kids to and from school, lunches, and before- or after-care fees.
However, most of the cost is spent on gas as well as vehicle wear and tear. That’s why families that utilize the bus save big.
When kids are driven to school by parents, their yearly school routine costs are about $3,170 each year. When kids take the bus, that number drops to $1,850 for a total savings of about $1,300 a year.
Additionally, driving kids to school takes an average of 16 more minutes each morning or 48 hours over the course of the school year.
What parents would rather be doing
The survey certainly makes the school commute sound bleak.
Not only are parents waking their (cranky?) kids up (77%), making them breakfast (63%), and managing morning meltdowns (44%), they’re also struggling to manage their time in the process.
Mostly, that time is being taken from hours that parents would rather spend sleeping. Sixty-four percent say they’ve lost sleep trying to keep up with their child’s school schedule, although women are disproportionately impacted.
More than 2 in 3 women (70%) lose sleep because of school logistics, while just over half of men do (53%).
But there are other important tasks parents are missing out on in order to stick to the school schedule, too.
They’re also losing out on time for self-care (41%), mental health (37%), eating breakfast (36%), and exercise (34%).
Of course, there’s no getting around the fact that kids have to go to school, unless you choose to homeschool them or let them take classes online.
Judging by the latest research, it’s not hard to understand why more families are choosing offbeat options. Because while school is important, getting kids there and back poses a challenge—especially for working parents. And, per the survey, 41% say it’s one of the most stressful parts of their day.
Given the cost and the time-suck, it’s easy to see why.