Shelby County Schools hears complaints about buses
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Social media sites continued to buzz Tuesday with complaints about operations in Shelby County Schools, particularly dealing with transportation, an area interim Supt. Dorsey Hopson said was keeping him up at night. And that was before classes started.
District officials have said they expect to tweak bus routes as long as three weeks into the inaugural year for the new unified city-county school district, and exasperated school families could see why, as buses ran late, buses ran early and a few buses, according to Facebook posts and calls to The Commercial Appeal, passed neighborhoods where their passengers lived.
In a typical Facebook post, one mother said she had tried to no avail to obtain a bus number, a pickup time or a drop-off time for her children, logging 128 calls since Friday to the district transportation office to hear nothing but a busy signal.
Another example of the district’s transportation problems was provided by Grad Academy, a charter school in South Memphis that is part of the Achievement School District that has contracted with SCS for bus service.
One of the stops was listed as Ross and Riverdale, two streets that run parallel; in another case children weren’t picked up on an entire street. Another was listed as the Mendenhall shopping center, a large facility where parents didn’t know exactly where to take their kids, school director Keyundah Coleman said.
These are the same sort of complaints that occur every year on the first day of classes, but bus routing was more complex this year because of various factors, including a cost- saving move to three bell times in the schools and the division of the unified district into two zones — one publicly operated and the other private.
The nagging controversy over the merger provided additional context to comments, especially among suburban residents who favor the move toward municipal school districts that would operate independently of the new SCS.
In a message to district patrons posted on the school district website (scsk12.org), Hopson said he recognized “that the changes we have gone through have been very emotional and that trust and belief in our district leaders has wavered at times.
But the salient question remained whether operational issues reflected an anticipated learning curve or larger systemic problems with district planning and logistics.
District spokesman Christian Ross said the district had received more than 100 comments on Facebook and Twitter, “a mixture of concerns and positive remarks about experiences thus far.”
Some questions that were raised Tuesday, along with answers provided by the district:
Q: What advice does the district have for parents whose children do not qualify for transportation but who would be required to cross busy thoroughfares without the benefit of a crosswalk or a stop light if they were to walk to school?
A: Parents who reside inside of the PRZ (parent responsibility zone, an area with a radius drawn up to 1.5 miles from school for elementary school families, 2 miles for secondary school families) and have concerns regarding the routes a child walks to school can contact the Office of Transporta- tion (901-321-2280). The quickest route between the home to the school may not always be the safest. Each transportation route is analyzed and reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Q: Would it be useful at this point for parents who believe their children have been assigned to the wrong bus stop to file a request for an alternative?
A: Parents have the opportunity to complete an alternative stop transportation request on a yearby-year basis, but there is no guarantee that the request will be approved. There are several factors that can contribute to the approval of these requests, including the number and locations of students on assigned routes and distance between the alternative pickup or drop-off location.
In this tight budget year, if the alternate stop request causes additional mileage to the route, they will not be approved.
Q: Is it correct, as has been suggested, that problems with the PowerSchool student information system was to blame when students’ advance deposits for lunches did not appear on cafeteria computer screens?
A: The student information system (PowerSchool SMS) is fully functional. Students will not appear in other student management systems until they are first enrolled in SMS. For students who changed schools or are new to the district, their data must be entered or updated, and then their data will be uploaded into other systems as the data is exchanged on a regular basis. Parents are not required to prepay for student meals in the MyPaymentsPlus system; it is optional and for parents who prefer not to send lunch money every day. No student will be turned away in the cafeteria if they have not prepaid for lunch.