School bus chaos: Parents demand resolution to long bus rides, constantly changing routes

John Rutter got a panicked text from his son, a sixth grader, shortly after getting on the bus home on his first day at Trask Middle School.

Rutter’s son had never ridden the bus before. His family had spent the last several days trying to get information on the route. But on the first day of school, they still faced confusion about what bus he would ride and the route it would take back home.

Rutter said his son, who they eventually learned had not yet been authorized to ride the bus and shouldn’t have been permitted to get on a school bus at all that day, ended up on one going across town to Hoggard High School.

Rutter said he quickly told his son to get off the bus as soon as he arrived at Hoggard. His wife then rushed to pick their son up from the high school.

“He was already nervous because it’s a new school and riding the bus was a new experience,” Rutter said. “Fortunately for us, he has a cell phone, and as soon as he left the area, he frantically contacted me.”

Rutter is one of many parents who say getting students to and from school over recently has been far from easy. In addition to finding the correct bus, Rutter said his son also hasn’t been able to find seating at times because buses are so crowded. His son's bus route also keeps changing.

School bus issues

Rutter shared his shared his frustrations around transportation at a September school board meeting and was met with a round of loud applause. He’s not the only one concerned with busing in New Hanover County Schools – other parents have taken to email and social media, demanding answers and resolutions.

Parents have reported students consistently arriving to school late and missing periods of class.

Clarissa Staggs told the StarNews her son was late to his honors chemistry classes at Laney High School during the first hour of school because of a late bus. The class starts around 8:30 a.m., and his bus wasn't picking him up until nearly 9 a.m.

Staggs commutes to Southport for work, so her mother takes her son to school each morning. That's not a longterm solution, though, she said. Staggs also started picking her daughter up in the afternoons from Holly Shelter Middle School because the bus wasn't dropping her off until close to 6 p.m., though school gets out at 3:55 p.m.

"Drop off time was at 4:15, and when I got home at 5:15, she still wasn't home," Staggs said of her daughter's first day of school. "So I of course called the school in an absolute panic because I didn't know where my child was."

Liz Soffera, the parent of students at Masonboro Elementary and Roland-Grise Middle School, said her sons have always rode the bus. This year, though, she’s resorted to picking them up on her own. She said her son in middle school wasn’t getting home until around 5 p.m. each day, taking away more than an hour of time for homework and after-school activities.

“These are our children,” she said. “This is their quality of life, their safety."

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Addressing the issue at September's school board meeting Superintendent Charles Foust said the district’s transportation department is serving around 1,000 more student than it did last school year. It transports around 13,000 students every day on 93 buses, Foust said, and the district continues to get requests for additional stops and new riders.

Assistant Superintendent of Operations Eddie Anderson said that’s back to pre-COVID numbers, but with far fewer bus drivers to meet the demand.

There are more than 200 routes that run each morning and afternoon. Foust said oftentimes, one bus will run two separate routes, picking up a group of students for the first then returning to the school for a second group of students.

That resulted in 44 reported late buses to start the 2022-23 school year, Foust said. That dropped to 27 reported late buses at the end of the first week, which Foust said is not unusual at the beginning of a school year.

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, the district averaged just one late bus each day, he added.

Heavy congestion in some parking lots due to parent drop-offs can also create issues for buses, Foust said. Many buses have students signed up for a route who do not actually ride the bus.

Proposed resolutions

Anderson told the school board the start to this school year has been smoother than last year, largely because of the “extraordinary bus drivers we have.” He said at the start of the 2021-22 school year, an average of 10 to 12 bus drivers were absent from work each day. This year, that’s been an average of two a day.

“I want to just start off by thanking our bus drivers and our transportation staff,” he said. “I know you received emails of complaints, concerns, but I hope you have also received emails thanking (them) and expressing appreciation.”

This week, the transportation department shared in a statement on the district’s Facebook page that it is working to remove students from bus assignments if they are not consistently riding the bus three times a week or more.

In theory, that would alleviate some of the issues the district is having – according to the statement, there are far more students signed up to ride buses than there are actually using bus transportation each day.

But parents said they believe that will add to the issue: many said their students aren’t riding the bus three times a week right now because otherwise they would be late to school or would arrive home hours after school got out.

Staggs said she learned only a day after the district released the plan that her son was removed from his morning bus to Laney and her daughter from her afternoon bus home from Holly Shelter. She said she was frustrated because she still plans to have her children ride the bus, but she also won't settle for them arriving to school or home an hour late.

"I've indicated that until they figure this out and get the times a little more sensible, I don't see how they expect people to send their child by bus if they're going to be missing almost their entire first period," she said.

Soffera said because she has the flexibility in her job, she has been picking up her students from school to spare them the hours spent waiting on the bus. She said she learned recently her children would be removed from the bus route because of that.

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That only added to the frustration, she said, because she can’t pick her children up from school every day for the rest of the year. She said eventually, they will need to ride the bus home.

For Rutter, he and his wife are making it work, but he feels for parents in Wilmington who don’t have the flexibility in their jobs and day-to-day life to wait in the car line every day. He said he wishes more funding could go toward providing bus drivers a higher wage, to ensure the district has enough quality transportation staff to get students to and from school in a timely manner each day.

“The answer is they should probably have asked for funding to hire drivers at a better rate than they’re doing right now," Rutter said. “Then they might not have the shortage … and (they might not be) running these bus drivers ragged.”

Contact reporter Sydney Hoover at shoover@gannett.com or on Twitter @sydneymhoover. Join the Education Issues in Southeastern North Carolina Facebook group to stay up-to-date on education news.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New Hanover parents demand answers to school transportation issues