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09/19/2018 09:00 AMThe first few weeks of a new school year tends to have its share of challenges as teachers, students, and parents settle back into the school routine. This year, with a new bell schedule and a new school bus company, the first few days of this school year proved more difficult than most.
Students went back to school on Aug. 30 and at the Board of Education (BOE) meeting on Sept. 11, Superintendent of Schools Paul Freeman informed the board that while the academics got off to a good start, the new bus system was a challenge and continues to be a work in progress.
This past summer, the BOE voted to shift school start times, sliding the high school back 15 minutes, the middle schools back 10 minutes, and the elementary schools back by five minutes. In addition to a new bell schedule, the district also has a new bus company, so new management, software, and drivers were thrown into the mix. Before the start of the year, Freeman said this opening might have more challenges and it seems he was right.
“The first few days of school were challenging,” he said. “We had some bus drop offs that were more than an hour late coming home from the elementary schools and we had some pick-ups in the a.m. that were frustrating for parents and for the schools.”
Freeman said the first few days are difficult because parents and students might be getting used to a new route or pick-up time, schools are ironing out dismissal processes, and other potential issues. Freeman said the district didn’t want to make changes right out of the gate to see if some problems will just shake themselves out, but he said the district is making adjustments as needed and keeping an eye on the issue.
“I am happy to report that today our buses cleared the roads at 4:35 p.m.,” he said. “That is a significant improvement over the first few days of school and very nearly where we want to be. We are not where we want to be yet. We still need to develop some consistency on some routes where the buses are simply unpredictable and there are some routes that remain problematic.”
To fix the problems, Freeman said the district is looking at everything and is thankful for parents contacting the administration to let it know about high-problem areas.
“We really appreciate everyone’s patience because we know it is frustrating when you are expecting the bus and it comes early or it comes late,” he said. “We know that we haven’t had all students home in a timely manner in these first seven days. We are committed to continuing to work on this until we get it right up to and including more buses if that is what it takes.”
BOE Chair Bill Bloss said part of the challenge in building the bus routes this year is when the board changed bus companies in a competitive bid process after the prior contract expired, the old bus company wasn’t willing to hand over data to the new company.
“We had to input every piece of data on every route and it had to start from scratch,” he said. “That’s too bad and frankly I think that is something that is going to be considered by somebody someday in whether to award a contract to another company, but that is not today’s problem.”
However, Bloss said one of the upsides of the new bus company is that every bus on the road this year is brand new and has certain new features as well.
“They have video cameras on the inside of the buses,” he said, “so if there is a complaint of misconduct against your child on a bus, call the principal and say, ‘I would like to have someone from the district check the video and we will find out what happened.’”
Freeman said while the start has been difficult, all involved parties are hard at work to improve the bus situation for students and parents.
“The good news is it’s going to get better from here,” he said.