Ashland has temporary bus driver shortage

Jan. 11—ASHLAND — A mother in the Ashland School District said she walked to pick up her child from school after being notified of no available buses.

Destinie Hayward, a mother of a kindergartner at Oakview Elementary School, is becoming frustrated over delays in buses. She said last year when her daughter was in preschool, the same issue was present.

"The bus driver shortage is getting ridiculous," Hayward said. "I have about eight emails from this year saying they have a driver shortage and will have to double up on buses. Today, I had to walk to pick up my daughter from school. Luckily my mom was on her way home from work, saw us walking and was able to pick us up."

Hayward recalled one morning when her and her daughter waited a half an hour for a bus that never arrived. She said someone else awaiting the school bus was notified the bus wasn't "running."

"Thankfully another parent offered us a ride so we didn't have to walk," she said. "She didn't have a bus to ride (twice)."

Sean Howard, Superintendent of Ashland Independent Schools, said he understands the frustration over the issue and said his mission of keeping kids safe has not changed.

"It does create an issue for families and we understand that," Howard said. "We certainly make our best effort to get kids home and delivered to school in a safe manner, but it may not always be in a timely manner. I understand parents get upset, frustrated and it puts an additional burden on them. We are not doing anything intentionally.

"This is an issue in every school district, not just here," he added. "That doesn't help the families, but when you look at things in a whole, we do the best we can with what we got."

Hayward expressed her situation of not having a vehicle at the moment and said she is forced to walk her child to and from school if and when there are no buses to transport her daughter to the elementary.

She said, "I am not able to drive right now and don't have a vehicle. If my daughter's bus doesn't run, then I have to walk her to and from school. It's not a fun time walking 20 minutes with a 5-year-old, who gets bored and tired of walking; especially as the weather is getting colder. I felt irritated that my daughter would have to walk home in the cold.

"That's why buses are supposed to be an option."

Hayward said the school district has lacked communication about canceled bus routes in a timely manner. She said she was notified "about an hour, hour and a half before school let out."

"I don't think that posting on ClassTag or Facebook is the best way to let parents know that your child doesn't have a ride home," she said. "They should call. Not everyone is on social media all the time, including me."

Howard said, "In those instances where they are getting notified 90 minutes before, it's probably due to the fact that we think we have things covered until we don't. People can call in at the last minute and say they are not coming in. We don't encourage them to do that, but we can't control that."

Hayward said Oakview "isn't smart" for emailing in the morning of the bus scheduled to run to announce "that the bus will be late due to a driver shortage and needing to double up on buses.

"We are busy trying to get our child up and ready for school," Hayward added.

Howard said, "Doubling up basically is where a bus will come and pick up kids from one school. There may be an elementary that has three buses that normally pick up their kids. Let's say two of the three drivers are out. What that means is you have one bus that's taking care of that one school — obviously it cannot carry three bus loads worth of kids at once.

"That creates a delay in being picked up at home in the morning and being dropped off in the afternoon," he added.

Howard said the temporary bus shortage is stemming from an absence of bus drivers at work.

"We have had some illness — a couple days where we've had as many as eight drivers call in sick. It would be a mixture of both," Howard said, responding to a question if whether the shortage was due to illnesses or a shortage of drivers in the district.

Howard said 21 employees typically drive for the district on a fully staffed day.

Hr said, "If they are all present then we are 100% covered. If you go from having 21 drivers on a given day, to having 13, then certainly that's going to create some issues for us.

"We also have sub drivers, but we don't have enough sub drivers to cover those regular full-time drivers."

He said the shortage comes and goes through time.

"It's very sporadic, we may go through a period where we don't have any issues for eight, nine, 10 weeks, then we may have three or four days, where it's really a struggle," he said. "Sometimes it may be for one day only. We certainly can't control people's illnesses."