Pandemic halts St. John’s bus to Little Rock

St. John’s Catholic School will not be using its bus to transport students to Catholic High School for Boys and Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“We plan to start back to a regular routine once the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. We will let anyone take the bus up there even if they don’t go to St. John’s, and they want to go to Catholic High or Mount St. Mary Academy,” Janet Edgar, St. John’s Catholic School principal, said.

She said the school is not using the bus to take the students to the Catholic schools in Little Rock because Dang Do, a ninth-grade student at Catholic High School for Boys, decided to do virtual learning and Matthew Bozeman, a ninth-grade student at Catholic High School for Boys, is doing blended learning, and his parents decided to take him themselves.

Karen Bozeman, Matthew Bozeman’s mother, said it was the right decision for her son to continue his Catholic education, but noted it was a challenge since they live in Hot Springs.

Edgar said there were some concerns about students traveling back and forth to Little Rock. Some parents said they didn’t want their kids to travel so

many hours a day because it is an hour each way.

“That’s two hours in a vehicle every day no matter what the weather (is) like,” she said.

Edgar said that, at the time, a lot of parents could not afford to travel to Little Rock with their schedules. Working parents couldn’t even manage the transportation part of getting their child to and from school.

Bozeman said it was a sacrifice and she and her husband had to make changes to their work schedule to get their son to school.

“My husband generally takes him in the mornings, and I pick him up ( in the afternoons),” she said.

Bozeman said Catholic High has two groups of students, gold and purple — the school colors — that switch days when they are on campus. Students with last names beginning with A through L are gold, and the students with last names L through Z are purple.

She said her son is a gold student, so for this week, he goes to school Tuesday and Thursday and does online assignments Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The purple students for this week go to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do online assignments Tuesday and Thursday.

“They are flipping those schedules every week,” Bozeman said.

Edgar said a lot of non- Catholic students attend St. John’s. The curriculum is harder, and the expectations are higher. She said there is a lot more parent involvement in a private school, noting when the school has a problem, they deal directly with the parents.

She said seeing the school’s dream come to fruition is an amazing opportunity.

“We are thinking about offering scholarships to the (students) that stay at St. John’s from when they were little through eighth grade,” Edgar said.

“We are trying to see if we can find the funding to completely pay for them to go to Catholic High School for Boys and Mount St. Mary Academy to help pay the tuition so that every child can afford to go there,” she said.

Edgar said she feels this was a good decision the school made, noting, “I think it was a long time coming. I think it was something that parents always wanted us to do. We are now in a position that we’re able to make this happen.”