What to Do About Stafford Schools' Transportation Problems?
"We always overpromise and underdeliver," School Board member says.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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The combination of a new office structure and new staff in the transportation department, plus new bus routing software, created the problems that plagued the first few weeks of school in Stafford County this year.
Between 3,000 and 3,500 students did not have assigned bus routes when school started two weeks ago, acting superintendent Chris R. Fulmer told the School Board at a special called meeting on Tuesday.
Now, he said, all general education students have assigned routes, with the exception of those with special requests such as bus stop changes or alternate stops.
Special education students are also all routed—if they have the necessary forms on file with the transportation department as part of their individual education plans, Fulmer said.
Though the situation has improved, he said, the division is aware that transportation is a significant problem that requires attention.
“We regressed,” Fulmer said. “We need to be better.”
An after-action report and a root cause analysis will be coming to the Board, Fulmer said, but he identified a number of “challenges and concerns” that must be addressed.
The need for better communication with students and families is at the top of the list, and that requires staffing and infrastructure. The new My Ride K-12 app does not work when there is inconsistent cell service—as is the case in much of the county, Board members pointed out.
Fulmer said the transportation app that had been in use is being discontinued by the vendor. He said staff had preliminary training on the new app in March of this year and the hope was that the division would be able to transition to the new app while continuing to use the old one.
“Limitations” prevented the two systems from running parallel, however, and previous routing information was lost.
The division implemented a call center during the first two weeks of school when the scale of the problem became evident. It was staffed by transportation employees and supported by Central Office staff—but it was still not able to handle the volume of calls, Fulmer said.
School staff also need to be able to provide accurate information to parents about when their child’s bus is running late, Fulmer said.
Among the other numerous challenges are the fact that there are only two radio channels for 311 buses division-wide; that increased special education enrollment has led to the need to dedicate 10 drivers to special education routes, leaving other routes uncovered; that there are more travel students this year with the debut of the new high school specialty centers; that traffic and road infrastructure in the county is unpredictable; and that large school attendance boundaries create challenges with routing and on-time arrivals.
Fulmer said staff are working on consolidating routes and digitizing special education transfer request forms to make that process less cumbersome.
He also said the division needs to implement transportation “opt-in,” rather than assuming that all students require bus transportation.
Fulmer said transportation staff felt they would be able to complete all the routing the week before school, and that it was not until the Sunday before the first day of school for transition students that they realized it wasn’t going to happen.
Board members pushed back on this assertion.
“The bus drivers knew [before then],” Aquia district representative Maya Guy said.
Rock Hill representative Patricia Healy said she appreciates the work staff have done to make the situation better, but said, “I don’t appreciate not knowing about this problem.”
“I think we need an independent review into why we didn’t know until the day before that 10% of our students would not have buses,” she said.
Hartwood representative Alyssa Halstead said the school division keeps “overpromising and underdelivering every year.”
“We can’t provide transportation to everyone,” she said.
Board Chair and Garrisonville representative Maureen Siegmund said the division should consider requiring parents to indicate whether their children will need transportation for the following year in May, before they are able to access final report cards.
“At least then we have a high-level starting point in May” to prepare for the following school year, Siegmund said.
Healy suggested that before the division decides to limit transportation options, it should seek an Attorney General’s opinion as to its legal obligations to provide transportation to public school students.
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Spotsy does ask parents in the spring if our kids will need transportation for the next school year. Of course, you can always adjust it, but they do ask so they have general numbers.
This just seems like a rough situation all the way around and I hope they can get a better plan figured out so it doesn’t happen again.