The ride home 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

But they each had the same-sized desk and the same-sized locker.

They all had equal access to the school’s health care system, its administrative system, its lunch system and its transportation system.

At 3 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, however, school bus No. 21 turns a right away from Hood River Middle School and down a road of inequality.

Most of the stops are along the west side of Belmont Drive, where quaint, middle-class homes sit neatly in perfect blocks. One of the last stops is at 175 Country Club Road, where 11 students – all Hispanic – walk toward the Columbia Gorge Trailer Park, a mass of dilapidated cabins.

One of those students is Anna Navaro, who is carrying her 1-year-old daughter in her arms.

It’s a route bus driver Connie Fisher knows well. She’s driven it for the last eight years.

“The same route every day, three times a day,” she says. Three stops after leaving the middle school, Fisher turns the bus onto Indian Creek Road toward Hood River Valley High School. There, the bus, which by now has unloaded all but a handful of middle schoolers, fills with 9th, 10th, 11th and sometimes 12th graders.

Because of this stop, Fisher has picked some students up at their houses, dropped them off at school, picked them up at school and dropped them off near their houses for years. One student in particular has hitched a ride everyday – except football season – for the last