Last week, the School District’s hope was for the issue to be resolved by this Monday (September 12th).
This week, the school bus blues continue in Prince George.
Lee Karpenko, the Assistant Superintendent of SD57, told MyPGNow.com that drivers are still being trained, and bus routes remain altered and canceled.
“We were unable to meet that expectation of having all the busses up and running [by Monday],” he said.
The rocky start with First Student continues, several drivers handed in letters of resignation about 48 hours before the first day of school last week, leaving the district in a bind.
“We believe that the canceled routes will continue to be canceled for a few more days as these bus drivers come online” Karpenko said, adding things have gotten mildly better over the week, saying they are down from “four or six canceled [routes] to two or three.”
On top of these canceled routes, six are still combined, which is resulting in longer bus rides to and from school.
He says First Student still needs an estimated five to eight more drivers to have a full fleet ready to go.
“First student is in the process of actively hiring bus drivers. They are coming online once they have met their certification and training.”
He is attributing part of the delay to the training, “they want to make sure that their drivers have their level of safety before they are allowed on the busses.”
Last week, a second grade student was dropped off in the middle of a high speed rural road when his parents were told he would be at a nearby fire hall, and they didn’t find out for 45 minutes where their child was.
Karpenko says he recognizes the frustrations parents have.
“We want to hear from parents either through a phone call or an email” he said. “What we are doing is trying to solve the problems they are having.”
“We will get back to you, we will try and solve that problem, and we will work with you to try and get your child to school.”
Some problems he cited were time inconsistencies and children not getting picked up regularly. He also mentioned there are a “high volume” of concerns form the community, and the District is trying to address them with First Student on a case-by-case basis.
Last week, Karpenko said he expected all the bus routes to be functional and on time by this past Monday. Now, he says he doesn’t have a date on when the full compliment of drivers will be ready.
You can find the current list of bus routes here.