COLUMBUS, Ohio — On day two of new bus routes for Columbus City Schools, parents are demanding more effective communication about what is going on with transportation, as they say buses are still coming hours late or not showing up at all.
Jeremy Bruskotter, said his 4th grader's bus didn't pick him up Wednesday morning, and dropped him off 46 minutes late after school. "Yesterday was a bit of a disaster," he said.
10TV reached out to CCS. The district acknowledged the issues.
"Yesterday afternoon and into the evening, we had about 15 to 20 buses that ran extremely late, which means out of the 466 routes we ran yesterday, more than 90% were running on time, or just a little bit behind," said Scott Varner, executive director of family engagement for CCS.
The district said there were several different reasons behind the buses running extremely late:
- buses had to wait for a parent or family member to come to the stop to collect their child (the bus driver will not let a student (second grade and under) off the bus without a family member being present at the drop-off location. If a parent is not present, the driver will continue along the route as attempts are made to contact the parent. The driver will circle back once the route is completed).
- Students were disruptive on the buses to the extent that the drivers felt the need to return to the school to seek help on disciplinary measures.
- Students accidentally boarded the wrong buses, forgetting that they had new routes.
- a couple of buses had mechanical issues.
However, late buses aren't the only issue concerning parents. One mother said her son now has to walk 25 minutes to get to his new bus stop.
"It's not a safe neighborhood. It's dark, and this is a busy street. Should no child have to walk 25 minutes at 6 o'clock in the morning," said another parent, Cherron Hudson.
The district said roughly 1,500 calls came into the Transportation Call Center just on Wednesday. On several occasions, the call center line reached its capacity.
In a statement, a district spokesperson said, "While we have doubled the staff helping to answer the calls, we had not originally planned to have the call center stay open longer - our team is looking at the potential for overtime to have staff continue to answer questions after the call center typically closes."
As part of its commitment to better communicating with families, CCS said it set up the EZ District notification tool to send emails and text messages to families when buses are running late. Several families reported not getting those messages yesterday so, today, CCS plans to send a test message to every family with students who ride buses.
If parents don’t get the message, they're encouraged to go into the Parent Portal to update their phone number and email (for Charter and Non-Public families, they need to contact their children’s schools and ask that the information be updated in the Infinite Campus system).