OKC district works to fix bus delays
Several bus delays have slowed transit for Oklahoma City Public Schools over the first week of classes.
Parents have repeatedly called the school district this week to report bus route delays, commonly about 20 to 30 minutes late, said Courtney Morton, district director of communications. Both morning pickups and afternoon drop- offs have been affected.
“The biggest complaint was that, `The bus was supposed to be here at this time. Now it's 30 minutes later. Where's my bus?'” Morton said. “The goal is to get the time in between stops down to five to six minutes.”
The school district set up a call center this week to answer parent questions and complaints specifically about transportation. Phone operators track the location of every bus and can contact drivers to ask whether specific students have been dropped off.
Morton encouraged parents to know their children's bus route and bus number. The call center searches for bus locations based off this information.
Schools are rolling out “grab and go” breakfast carts for students who arrive late for morning breakfast, Morton said. Students are allowed to bring on-the-go breakfast items with them to class in case a delayed bus route leaves them little time to go through the cafeteria line.
Bus delays are resulting from a collection of issues, Morton said.
The district is short on bus drivers, with 112 employees covering 115 to 120 routes. After the
district consolidated school buildings this summer, the transportation department remapped all of its routes and added five to 10 more.
Drivers are still on a learning curve, and so are schools and students, Morton said.
The district expected bus ridership to increase this
school year after school consolidations directed many students to schools that are farther from their homes. Several students are learning how to navigate school transportation for the first time.
“We have some schools that have never had transportation before, and now they do,” Morton said. “( They're) learning arrival and dismissal procedures and getting acclimated to that.”
The district employed 112 bus drivers as of the first day of school Monday, Transportation Director Scott Lane said during a district Board of Education meeting this week.
During interviews the week before school, Lane said he hoped to hire 140 drivers to cover field trips and absences on top of the district's rising number of bus routes.
“Last year we transported right around 7,000 students a day. I expect that definitely to rise,” Lane said last week. “There definitely are some students that are going to be on the bus that haven't been before, some areas that we're going to be picking up students in that we haven't before.”