Durham Public Schools is working on plans to implement family responsibility zones and express bus stops for secondary magnet schools when students return from the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The strategies are to address an ongoing shortage of bus drivers and to end rotational service that has been used temporarily for all bus riders in the district.
The school board held a special meeting Monday night to discuss transportation issues and ask questions of administrative staff. The plans are not yet final and could still change, but here are some of the takeaways from their discussion:
Family responsibility zones
- These zones will end bus service for about 900 students who live within 1.5 miles of their elementary school. Not all students who live within that distance of their school are affected, and any family who will be affected has already been notified by their school. The zones were selected based on the walkability of the neighborhood and safety considerations.
- Durham Public Schools plans to post maps of the family responsibility zones on its transportation website this week. Principals and school staff will not share lists of affected students who need help getting to school because that poses a liability to the district. A student in need of assistance could give family permission to get help from community groups organizing carpools or walking groups.
Express bus stops
- These will affect about 1,100 students who attend Durham School of the Arts, Rogers-Herr Middle School, and The School for Creative Studies. This strategy would end neighborhood bus service for those students, instead creating bus stops at other schools where those students can catch the bus to their magnet school.
- Durham Public Schools transportation staff are working to designate locations and drop-off times for express bus stops and plan to send more details to affected families this week. The locations will be other DPS schools. Walkability or sidewalk infrastructure were not a factor in choosing the locations.
- Express bus stops will not have on-site supervision. Families dropping off their children can stay and supervise until the bus arrives, but will not be required to do so. Staff are aiming for the wait times at express bus stops to be roughly 20-minute windows.
Other issues for future meetings:
- Several school board members expressed concern that the district should have a clear appeals process for students affected by these policies who face hardships and cannot find another way to school to request bus service. Administrators indicated that they want families to seek other alternatives, like community carpooling, to reduce the need for appeals and do not want appeals decisions to fall on principals or school-level staff.
- Families who will be affected by family responsibility zones or magnet express stops have been invited to complete a survey about busing issues, and the results will be shared at the school board’s meeting on Thursday.
