The car line at Sherwood Githens Middle School wrapped out to the street on Monday morning. At 8 a.m., the school doors opened and for the next half hour, students streamed out of cars.
Millicent Rogers, chair of Durham Public Schools’ board of education, was one of the many parents dropping off a child. Rogers started driving her son to school recently because of the bus driver shortage, after district officials asked families to opt out of bus service if they can.
“We spend a lot more time together. We’re able to talk about things that we didn’t used to talk about,” Rogers said. “But he’s eager to get back on the bus.”
Now, many more families will be joining them in the drop-off line. As an on-going bus driver shortage has grown more acute this fall, Durham Public Schools has turned to a new solution: rotational busing. Under this plan, all bus riders will be assigned one day a week in which their bus won’t run.
Rogers hopes this new schedule allows families to plan ahead. Her son’s bus was unreliable this year, and there were times she had to suddenly cancel work meetings to pick him up from school.
“It’s better to have set times that I’m not available … rather than having to panic at the last minute,” Rogers explained.
The district needs at least 30 more bus drivers, and that’s impacting thousands of students. There aren’t enough drivers to cover every route, let alone serve as substitutes when a driver is sick. The district is trying to spread out the burden to be more equitable — so no student will be without a bus multiple days in a row.
Rogers knows this plan has been frustrating for many parents, but she hopes it will improve student attendance across the district.
“We look forward to hearing that most students are getting to schools even on the day that the service is not there,” Rogers said.
Up until now, some students who rely on buses have had trouble getting to school for weeks or months. The rotational bus plan is designed to help those students.
Elementary school principal has been driving children home from school
Shemica Pierce has five children who attend Lakewood Elementary. She used to drive them to school herself, until their family van was totaled in an accident last month. Pierce reached out to the school to ask for her children to be assigned to a bus.
“They did the next day, but for like the first full week there was no bus driver,” Pierce said.
The bus that serves their apartment complex hasn’t had a designated driver all year, according to Pierce. Sometimes it runs, but often it doesn’t. To fill in the gaps, the school’s principal and assistant principal have been driving her children to or from school in their personal vehicles.
“Never did I ever think that because the school bus isn’t running, that the principal makes sure that the kids get to school,” Pierce said. “It’s not just my kids; there’s other kids that they pick up also.”
Pierce said she’s grateful for the help, but her family needs a long-term solution. For the time being, rotational busing means their bus should run more often.
“I know it affects everyone else, because they haven’t had any issues, and now they’re about to have an issue,” Pierce said. “But I want them to know that you might go through this one day a week, but we’ve had to go through this maybe five days out of the week.”
John Sjogren’s daughter is one of the newly affected students. His daughter didn’t have a bus Monday because of the new plan, but he says he understands why the district made this move. For now, he’s able to take his daughter to school on the few days she won’t have bus service.
“It’s nice that they’re doing something because we had so many issues with the buses last year with my stepson,” Sjogren explained. “He’d get to school two hours late every day, and you can’t pass a class you’re not in.”
Latest strategies include expanding “family responsibility zones” and adding “express stops” for secondary magnet schools
Rogers, the board chair, said her biggest worry is that some students are missing out on their education. She says she’s anxious to see if this plan helps.
DPS board meeting materials
“It’ll be interesting to see what attendance data looks like after this, by percentage, by school, by demographic, to see who shows up. Like after a week, look at that data and see who’s there and who’s not,” Rogers said.
Rogers also said she hopes the rotational bus plan is temporary. The school board has approved it for three weeks in December, until the district can implement other strategies.
On Monday night, the school board discussed two other solutions that could start in January. First, would be to create “family responsibility zones” that would end bus service for about a thousand students who live within 1.5 miles from one of 21 elementary schools. Those schools and zones have not yet been announced.
The other strategy would end neighborhood bus service for about 1,100 students attending three magnet schools – Durham School of the Arts, Rogers-Herr Middle School and The School for Creative Studies – instead creating “express stops” at nearby schools where families would have to drop their child off to get on a bus to their school.
School board members came to a consensus that the district can pursue both options, but administrators still have to hammer out the details. Both items will be on the school board’s agenda on December 19.
