Our school district knows that many families rely on our Transportation Department each day to get their child(ren) safely to and from school. Unfortunately, like many other school districts across the state, our district has been impacted by bus driver shortages and has had to cancel bus runs. We recognize the inconvenience this causes our families and appreciate your understanding.
As a district, we continue to take many steps to improve the situation and minimize the impact on our families including:
- Ongoing recruitment of new bus drivers as well as expedited training opportunities for new hires.
- Implementing driver referral and training incentives to attract new drivers
- Consolidating of bus runs based on student ridership to improve efficiency
- Distributing the cancellations so that a single bus route is not impacted for extended periods of time
- Adding opportunities for drivers to go back out and pick up students after assigned runs are completed
Additionally, the district has created a school attendance code that will document bus cancellations that do not count against a student’s attendance record.
As a reminder, if a daily bus run does need to be cancelled for a day, parents/guardians will be notified with a phone call through SchoolMessenger as early as possible that they will need to make alternate arrangements to transport their child to school. If parents/guardians are unable to make these arrangements for the morning, please notify the Transportation Department’s Routing Office at (518) 587-4545, ext. 11315.
Finally, we invite you to consider being a bus driver. Our drivers make an enormous impact on our students, and they are the first and last adults many students see each day. If you are interested, apply online through RecruitFront or contact the Transportation Department at (518) 587-4545 to learn more!