Background: Along with school consolidation, school bus systems have been introduced recently in Japan. One benefit of school bus commuting is that it ensures school route safety. However, its influences must be reviewed from multiple perspectives to guarantee student school bus riders' safe and secure school life and to maintain and improve their mental and physical health. Understanding how school bus commuting affects those students, teachers, parents, and local residents can help to elucidate appropriate health management for students, reference information for introducing school bus systems, ideal modes of school bus systems currently introduced, and information about how teachers should be involved in it.

Objective: This study was conducted using interviews of school administrators to clarify school bus commuting influences on students, teachers, parents, and local residents.

Methods: During January 22, 2020 through February 20, 2020, we interviewed administrators at 12 public schools operated by local governments providing school bus commuting services. The results were analyzed from three perspectives: how school bus commuting affects students, teachers, and parents and local residents. After extracting contents indicating influences of school bus commuting from interview records as codes, we sorted similar codes into subcategories and categories while raising the level of abstraction.

Results: Our findings revealed that school bus commuting affects students, teachers, and parents and local residents. Findings indicate both positive and negative influences. Positive influences on students were [ensuring safety], [expanding activity time and content], and [increasing interactions with local residents]. Negative influences were [constraints on living hours according to the bus], [risks of spreading infectious diseases], [concerns about decreased physical activity and physical strength], and [interpersonal difficulties inside the bus]. Positive influences on teachers were [saving teachers' time after class] and [using school bus commuting as an educational opportunity]. Negative influences were [increased responses for the safe operation of school bus commuting], [needs for decision, liaison and coordination for bus operation], and [constraints on teaching and work to prioritize bus operating hours]. [Involvement with local children through school bus commuting], [expectations for ensuring children's safety], and [reducing parents' burdens of picking up and dropping off students] were identified as influences on parents and local residents.

Conclusions: In addition to ensuring school route security, students benefit from school bus commuting educationally through improvement of their activities and interactions with adults in the community. Teachers also tried to produce educational benefits from school bus commuting, compensating for obstacles to those students' daily life and concerns about health and physical strength. Teachers and communities supported school bus commuting cooperatively. The findings suggest a need for deepened discussions of school bus commuting, considering not only influences on students but also those on teachers, parents, and local residents.