Durham Public Schools currently has 17 buses without a consistent bus driver, leading to frequent bus route cancellations. Last minute cancellations have left students stranded at home or at school, and parents scrambling for other options.
“Over the past month or so, I’m not sure we’ve had many, if any, days where we’ve had 100% of the buses running in the morning and the afternoon,” said Jenna Crowther, a parent of a student at Lakewood Elementary.
Crowther sees notifications from the principal on the school’s messaging app, followed quickly by responses from other parents.
“There’s always at least a couple of responses that either note that a child won’t come to school that day because of no bus service, or, a parent noting, ‘I can’t leave work to come pick up my kid.’ So there’s clearly a lot of stress and disruption,” Crowther told WUNC.
Short-term solutions
The Durham Public Schools’ board of education discussed both immediate and mid-term solutions to the bus driver shortage Thursday night.
The district lacks about 30 school bus drivers to meet full capacity to fill full-time and substitute positions for all students who have requested bus service. About 13,000 students ride the bus to school in the district, and nearly twice as many have requested service. Certain bus routes have been disproportionately affected by the shortage.
“With the limited resources that we have, we have a chance to distribute that shortage across and make sure that the resources that we have are shared amongst all DPS families,” said Matthew Palmer, DPS executive director of School Planning, Transportation and Nutrition.
Durham Public Schools will begin rotational busing for at least three weeks beginning the Monday after Thanksgiving. From December 2 through December 20, most bus riders will be asked to find other transportation one day a week. This plan will allow the district to provide full bus coverage for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness.
Buses will be placed in five groups, with each group rotating off service once a week.
“So on Monday, there’s 25 bus routes that won’t be carried, a different set on Tuesday, a different set on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday,” Palmer said.
School administrators plan to communicate the rotational schedule to students’ families beginning Friday. Bus drivers will also hand out postcards to students to explain their schedule.
Parents who spoke during the board meeting’s public comment period urged for this plan to be implemented immediately. Transportation officials explained that they need time to establish the schedule and to train drivers on new routes.
“It is an incredibly difficult puzzle to piece together, and it is an extra ask for our drivers to learn routes that they are not familiar with, and students that they don’t have built relationships with, and I want to appreciate the ways that they are stepping up for us,” said board member Natalie Beyer.
District officials also made a request two weeks ago for families to opt out of bus service if they are able to provide their own transportation.
Mid-term solutions for January and beyond
The school board discussed further solutions that the district expects to implement in January.
The district may establish additional “family responsibility zones” – also known as “walk zones” – at as many as 21 elementary schools.
DPS board meeting materials
In those zones, students who live within a mile and a half of their school would be expected to walk or find other transportation. The elementary schools would be designated based on having safe conditions for pedestrians, which will be assessed at a later time. The district has not yet named which 21 schools may be assigned family responsibility zones.
District officials are also preparing to implement “express stops” for the magnet schools Durham School of the Arts, Rogers-Herr Middle School and the School for Creative Studies. The express bus stops would be placed at several community locations where students can be dropped off to wait for the bus, rather than picking students up outside their homes.
The school board plans to discuss these options at its next regularly scheduled meeting in December.
Another concern: the impact bus route cancellations may have on student absenteeism, which has been prevalent since the pandemic. District transportation officials say it’s reasonable to assume the bus driver shortage is contributing to that ongoing problem.
The district is also actively recruiting and training new bus drivers. About 90 candidates have passed background checks and are in the process of becoming licensed to drive a school bus. But that process takes months, in part due to statewide understaffing at the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, which licenses drivers.
“The journey to go from interested in driving to driving behind the wheel for DPS, is a journey that is 35 steps long,” Palmer said.
