Here are some new updates on the Wake County school bus transportation problems.
Wake Schools Superintendent Tony Tata has announced he'll hold a 3 p.m. press conference today "to discuss the return of traditional-calendar schools and answer questions on transportation services."
Also today, Progress NC Action is blaming Wake's transportation issues on "budget cuts by our state lawmakers." The liberal advocacy group has largely stayed out of Wake school issues since going after Heather Losurdo in last fall's school board elections.
Here's the group's press release:
NC State Budget The Root Cause Of Wake School Bus Debacle
State lawmakers who cut school budget deserve blame in Wake School bus debacle
WAKE COUNTY - Parents across Wake County are furious this morning after the first-day-of-school chaos created by Wake County school buses. There were long rides and huge delays, and some buses never showed up. Some parents resorted to calling police after their children did not make it home hours after the school day ended. The confusion is well-documented, but the causes less so.
Part of the blame lies at the feet of state lawmakers who cut the public school budget, forcing counties like Wake to make cuts. One way Wake County Schools made ends meet - without cutting teachers - was to cut the number of school buses. Wake County has 53 fewer school buses operating this year, despite having more students than last year.
"Wake County's school bus debacle is a clear result of budget cuts by our state lawmakers," said Gerrick Brenner, Executive Director of Progress NC Action. "Wake County Schools have 4,000 more children this year, less money, and 53 fewer buses. When lawmakers keep cutting school budgets, we start to see massive breakdown like the bus routes on Monday. Our state lawmakers need to be held accountable for this mess."
Wake County lawmakers who voted for this year's state budget - which included a $190 million cut to public schools - are Rep. Marilyn Avila, Rep. Nelson Dollar, Rep. Tom Murry, Rep. Paul Stam, Sen. Neal Hunt and Sen. Richard Stevens.
UPDATE
I'll get into it more in the morning, but the upshot of today's press conference is that Tata says he's added four more buses to improve service.
Tata says he'll add more if needed but thinks they're pretty close to having the right number. This means that Wake has 48 instead of 52 fewer buses on the road than last year. (The number of 53 mentioned Monday was off by one.)
Tata says they're monitoring the situation and that it's getting better each day.
Comments
As Bob noted SES requirements were impacted by the waiver
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 23:35 — nmoskalOops - meant to reply to Bob's post below.
SES is no longer required to be provided (although districts can choose to continue to provide it).
I'm curious to know what are the "new ways to hold Title I schools accountable..." given LEAs are no longer required to identify Title I schools for improvement, corrective action, and restructuring or take improvement actions. Is there actually accountability at this point? What are the "new initiatives to support effective instruction and leadership"?
From NCDPI
In May 2012, North Carolina was granted flexibility waivers from many of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) provisions. This flexibility, granted by the U.S. Department of Education, makes significant changes to North Carolina’s implementation of Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s (ESEA) requirements especially in the areas of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), parent notifications, public school choice and Supplemental Educational Services (SES). These waivers will allow North Carolina’s public school system to move forward with strengthened College- and Career-Ready expectations for all students, new ways to hold Title I schools accountable for students' academic proficiency, and new initiatives to support effective instruction and leadership.
Beginning with the 2012-13 school year, local education agencies (LEAs) are no longer required to identify Title I schools for improvement, corrective action, and restructuring and are no longer required to take certain improvement actions as outlined in ESEA section 1116(b) such as offering public school choice and supplemental educational services (SES).
Although the administration of SES under provisions of Section 1116(b) of ESEA will no longer be required, districts may choose to continue to implement before- and after-school tutoring services with State-approved SES providers.
Thanks
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 07:50 — lferreriThanks. I haven't been following the changes so I didn't know that the waivers eliminated the mandated SES. I suspect that means it will disappear from NC schools. I have some problems both with the SES rules and the implementation so I have mixed feelings about its elimination.
I think there's a bigger point here. These kinds of programs, whether they are mandated by law or voluntarily put in place by the system, are likely to continue to exist. E&R has published a number of reports on remedial programs in recent years. Too many of them show little effectiveness. Yet there doesn't seem to be a systematic corrective response. Some problems reappear such as the placement of inappropriate students into the program or the expansion of programs whose initial results don't seem to demonstrate effectiveness.
The ED Task Force in its early days had an interesting presentation on a dropout prevention program that was effective for students who were likely to drop out but detrimental for those who were not but were placed in the program anyway. This is the kind of study we need to do when programs are put into place. Then we need to eliminate the ones that don't work or take action to correct issues that are limiting the effectiveness of the program. (Sometimes we can't do the former since the program is mandated.) That's why I think oversight is so important.
The Bus situation will not be stable
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 21:18 — VillageMentalityUntil we are willing to recognize this system is entirely too large to be handled by a few numbskulls we call call school board. We need to seriously look at returning to City and County districts. Kinghtdale, Wendell, Wake Forest, Cary, Apex, Fuquay et al have their own unique demographics and needs. Big is not better. We can't get a handle on the magnitude or scope of this monster and folks are just getting frustrated.
Its funding issue first
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 10:13 — Apexcitizen1It's a funding issue first. If they couldn't fund the transportation expense of the choice plan then they never should have offered it or modified it. Choice plan would okay but fund it correctly. Plus there are some flaws with the feeder concept. Tata tried to hard to make this plan work with insufficient level of funding.
Bus service has been smooth up until this year
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 09:25 — Apexcitizen1Lilybug,
Why would you be mystified? You've made a choice based on some criteria that it's more important for you to drive. Your choice your decision. Most parents have made the opposite choice and we have expectations that the bus will arrive within a reasonable time of scheduled pickup. We also have a level of tolerance that you don't seem to have. It's been smooth for us for 6 years until this year. The one two punch of implementing an underfunded choice plan and state/county budget cuts have really caused these issues.
A choice plan is great but fund it properly, if you can't fund it don't offer a choice plan it's that simple. It's pretty clear to all now that you can't achieve realistic busing plan that works with the state bus efficiency targets. The millions that they we're expecting to save we're only and paper and real world are infeasible to achieve.
You also have an incorrect misconception of what happens when waiting for the school bus. Waiting at a bus stop isn't necessarily idle time like you assume. It's time for the kids to interact, parents to talk and everyone have a short respite before the school or workday. Its part of the fabric of a neighborhood.
I don't believe it is a
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 09:51 — NWRaleighMomI don't believe it is a 'choice' plan fault. Annettahaggard wrote earlier that her son's bus has three riders (Hunter). How can anyone expect this system to be efficient with three kids riding one bus?
3 riders
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 10:25 — turnerk1Because that bus got to Hunter hours after school ended, it probably only had 3 riders because those were the only kids that hadn't already been picked up by their parents.
I don't remember her saying
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 11:00 — NWRaleighMomI don't remember her saying that bus got to Hunter hours after school ended. Anyway, magnet buses are not filled to capacity of traditional buses. As Tata said last year, 25 extra buses serve magnet schools. It is quite a lot of buses. All buses except for magnet ones stopping in our neighborhood filled to capacity. So the 'choice' (whatever that is) does not translate into extra buses, maybe just extra stops.
In fact, tumerk is correct.
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 08:53 — annettahoggardIn fact, tumerk is correct. My son had so few on the bus because he didn't get home until 6:50. Many of the route's riders got picked up by parents earlier. Although, my son said there were only 3 on the bus, a parent told me there were 7 on Monday when the bus picked up. The route has 16 stops.
not this year
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 16:17 — EBDarcyMy small neighborhood is the next to the last stop on a Ligon/Enloe route. They eliminated the express bus that many in our area rode. Neighbors told me all express buses to Ligon were eliminated. So now most of the kids who rode the express are on the neighborhood bus. And it's full. Last year no one in our neighborhood took the neighborhood bus, this year there are 7 or 8 kids riding.
Perhaps they eliminated the
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 17:52 — jenmanPerhaps they eliminated the express buses in order consolidate and eliminate 2 different buses going to the same area. If you've got a neighborhood bus that's half full and an express bus that has a stop in the area that's only half full then you can eliminate one of those buses and serve the same number of students.
From what I have been told, transportation has tried to get rid of neighborhood busing for the GT and AG magnets and put them on express like the rest of the magnets for at least 8 years now. Everytime they bring it up there is a huge outcry from parents and the idea gets dropped. The rumor over the summer was that they were going to eliminate neighborhood busing for Ligon and move to express.
I looked at the bus routes for Ligon and it appears that your neighbors are right--I only saw one express stop, which is at Wakefield High and is a stop included on a neighborhood bus route. Otherwise no others were listed as express. It does seem like there are fewer stops in our neighborhood for the Ligon/Enloe bus this year but I'm just going by memory so I could be wrong.
I agree Apexcitizen1. I
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 09:33 — annettahoggardI agree Apexcitizen1. I watched the news conference on WRAL's website and it just seems so crazy that Mr. Tata keeps talking about the millions of dollars saved when those saved dollars really translate into hardships for children AND bus drivers. The expectations were unrealistic. Thankfully, our (very nice new) bus driver was almost on time this morning (only a few minutes late). I'm crossing my fingers that he gets my son home in a timely way this afternoon.
Getting better each day?
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 00:36 — raleighlauraMy child's usual bus seatmate was unable to be picked up by his mom today, and arrived home at 6:30pm. School let's out at 3:45, and bedtime is 8:30. We don't need improvements on an incremental basis. For now, get all 50 buses back on the routes and make the system wide changes incrementally so the children are not impacted as greatly.
I will add as an aside that these kids have lunch at 11:30 and because they are older elementary kids, they don't have afternoon snack. If the schools ar going to keep the kids sitting there for 2+ hours waiting for a bus to come, they should at least give the kids a snack and water.
I am so thankful that I do
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 07:41 — lilybugI am so thankful that I do not have to rely on the county to transport my children places. I can't imagine having the responsibility of getting the county's kids to school and back every day or how that could possibly be smooth. I watch neigbors standing at bus stops for half an hour-they could have easily driven the kids and been back home by then. I'm mystified.
lillybug - seriously - another hole
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 12:40 — sam123456we wait so that the bus drivers know that kids will be on the bus. I pay taxes for a service -- if that service is not a quality experience...why shouldn't I be able to complain. Unfortuntaley, due to the choice plan, initial bus service has failed. This is yet another hole of the plan and it needs to be fixed! Unfortunately this plan was rushed through by the previous board and now our children are paying the price. Surprisingly previous board members that touted the new plan are now silent.
Holy Holes Sam
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 16:04 — FSandYOUYou're just another whiny parent that didn't get what you wanted, what ever that was, fell through a hole and has yet to hit bottom. Every year there's a new batch of those kind of parents and it just happens to be your turn this year. It's unfortunate, but the way it goes in the ole wcpss isn't it. We all take a hit for "the team" sooner or later don't we. Just ask the 200+ over at, where was it again, East Wake Middle?
As for previous board reps being silent, I'm pretty sure they don't have much of a voice now that the voters elected another batch of liberal goofballs. So if you want to blame anyone blame your new board majority. Especially your Rep. Mr. Do Nothing. They've been in place going on a year now and HAVE DONE NOTHING for your problem or anyone elses.
But be patient, someday they might and that hole you so enjoy looking through will close right up. Then you'll be complaining about something else.
But when you do please try to keep your comments civil, won't you.
FSandYou
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 16:16 — sam123456why am i a whiny parent??? Is it because I pay for bus transportation and expect to receive a quality service???
By the way -- why do you care so much for the 200. You have told/scolded me many times that small numbers don't matter.
Well Sam
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 20:25 — FSandYOUYou have been whining about whatever your bitch is since day one with this plan. Or at least since the day you found out you weren't getting whatever it is you want(ed).
You see Sam, Wake County is full of whiny parents. It's inevitable in a system this large and those who want to cry about "breaking up the system" because of their moans and groans are delusional if they think that is EVER going to happen. Not as long as the voters keep electing the same liberal, diversity, elitist driven morons to run the schools.
Sure, how the bus thing has worked out so far isn't ideal, I am not belittling the concern and worry any of those parents have had, that is AB SO LUTELY understandable. But, you heard the reason this has occurred is not because of an assignment plan, but rather to TRY AND DO SOMETHING to keep from forfeiting the 5 mill. Had the 5 mill been forfeited we'd be hearing from many more than you, I or Jack Black across the street about the 100's of teachers that WOULD HAVE HAD TO BE FIRED.
Once this stumble goes away it will be onto the next crisis, another round of bond lies, threats and propaganda and then the bigger fun comes, another freaking assignment plan. One that is guaranteed to take us backward once again, create more "HOLES" and guaranteed to Pssssss off a whole lot more than a few hundred parents who have had to be inconvenienced to take their kids to and from for a few days.
You see Sam, we're all small in numbers and when it's just a few those few are simply ignored. Spread the unhappiness around in small chunks and people stay dizzy and can't keep up. A few hundred here & there don't mean squat to a system this large.
Just ask those 200 or so over at, where was it again???
It doesn't really matter
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 15:20 — danofncIt doesn't really matter what assignment plan you're using. If you take out 50+ buses and add 5,000+ students, there are going to be some problems. There's just no way around it.
Even if we had strict neighborhood schools, there would still be problems. Buses that have to make 25-30 stops to pick up 50-60 kids are going to have fairly long routes. The first kids on and the last kids off are going to have long rides, which would only seem worse if they lived 2 or 3 miles from school but rode the bus for 45 minutes.
...
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 13:41 — SideburnsUnfortuntaley, due to the choice plan, initial bus service has failed.
Why is the choice plan to blame? Please explain (preferably without using the word "holes").
more outlier stops
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 06:29 — stepbystepWith the choice plan there appear to be more outlier stops needed to collect students in areas that otherwise would not have been part of a school's (former) assignment zone. Also, this is anecdotal, but I have noted approximately twice as many buses traveling through our neighborhood each morning and afternoon. I realize we're in an area with lots of proximate schools and those two observations may not hold true elsewhere in the county. But, for Mr. Tata to say that the Choice Plan hasn't had an impact on the busing debacle this week seems incorrect, at least for some areas of the county.
sideburns
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 16:13 — sam123456Buses going half way across the county has lead to longer bus rides. Only reason that they are going that far is that some families chose to go to a farther school.
...
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 18:17 — SideburnsWell, no. Grandfathering is probably the biggest reason for long distance bus rides -- and those assignments are from the past plan. Fortunately, the choice plan allowed all children the opportunity to stay at their current school.
Most of the choices in the new plan are proximate. The really long distance choices are magnets or achievement schools. Should families not be allowed to make those choices?
(I'm impressed -- no "holes".)
Amen Lilybug
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 12:36 — FSandYOUIn all the time they stand around bitching "where's my bus", "I pay taxes and it's my right", "How dare they" they could have dropped off or picked up their own kids and stopped by DQ for a freakin' blizzard. I bet most of them have scared their kids half to death with all this whining.
I thought bus rides are a
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 17:19 — lilybugI thought bus rides are a courtesy. People demanding that the government transport their children to school for them....wow. Work obligations and conflicts are your family's to work out. The system is overwhelmed because of everyone's demands.
I agree with not doing this
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 07:25 — tropicalgirlI agree with not doing this incrementally. I read they're adding 2 buses in Apex - really? For which schools? Because our school alone could use them.
I'm about to get ready for work and then go stand at the bus stop with my daughter. For two days, we have waited until nearly 9 and then driven over. I was never able to get through to Apex Transportation by phone yesterday - no one answered and the maibox was full - and sent two emails through their online system and called the main office. No one has gotten back to us and we have no idea what to expect this morning. I've already told my office I'll be late. Probably very late.
And I'll beat my dead horse again. Our surrounding neighbors have had no problem with their bus this week. Had we not lost our option to go to our base school and had to go through the choice plan which resulted in going to a school further away that none of our nieghbors attend, we would be on their bus and wouldn't be going through this nightmare and there wouldn't be a bus going through the neighborhood for one or two children. Taking 50 plus buses off the road at the same time they introduced a plan that really requires more buses is just the kind of genius I've come to expect from Wake County.
WCPSS needs more transparency on the busing
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 09:35 — Apexcitizen1It's not enough to for them to say their working on it and expect us to communicate to them the problems. They need to be proactively working on the situation and post specific update via web, twitter etc. etc. They have the route data. (time, ridership and stops).
If all the buses don't have the GPS units yet then go back to pen and paper and record stop time and ridership.
This choice plan in its current format is really a big mess for parents. The entire idea of feeder patterns needs to be scrapped and go back to base assignments. You can still have choice with a base plan. Your current situation is really unacceptable and they should fix your child's assignment. We're going to be facing a similar issue in a few years from middle to high school if they don't fix the broken aspects of this plan.
Of course it will get
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 21:26 — bus_basicsOf course it will get better, once they have run out of mistakes to make. Question is: how many mistakes with academics before the choice plan is fixed? Before they get their act together with teaching to the common core standards?
Gotta love the way
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 19:09 — occum_sharpeTata can create millions in savings by cutting buses and then two days into the traditional calendar, bring back dozens of buses to try and fix the debacle that cutting them caused. The way Tata saves money and creates efficiency, we'll need a new bond just to transport students in this nutjob assignment plan. I think it's real simple. Want a new bond, get a new superintendent. This is a joke.
...
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 21:10 — Sideburns...bring back dozens of buses to try and fix the debacle that cutting them caused.
Uh, 4?
Buses
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 21:09 — nriemannIt seems like they are bringing back only a handful of buses, rather than dozens, and that after they do, they will be using about 5% fewer than last year? Assuming that this limited addition satisfactorily addresses the problem, the reduced need for buses seems to undermine, rather than support, the claim that transportation costs under the choice plan are higher.
I'm not sure that's true.
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 06:58 — danofncI'm not sure that's true. The buses that aren't on the road are still owned by the county.
The only thing you're saving is the money you'd pay the drivers of those buses and the maintenance on those buses.
But, you're paying the people who are driving buses now more, because they are working longer hours. You're also paying more in "kid time", because almost everyone has a longer (in many cases much longer) bus ride than they did last year.
Bus Operation Costs
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 21:07 — nriemannOwning an idling asset doen't cost much. Running it does. The ins and outs of bus transportation costs are discussed in the certified annual financial reports on the WCPSS website. Some drivers will work more, but I would expect some efficiencies, and they will certainly save gas and mileage or they wouldn't have reduced the number of buses. I am sure you are right that parents and kids will bear shifted costs, but that sort of implicit tax arises with every reduction in service level. If folks were willing to pay more, the cuts would not be necessary. I personally would pay more for shorter routes, but Wake's routes are already short by comparison with those of many rural counties.
"they will certainly save
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 22:00 — danofnc"they will certainly save gas and mileage or they wouldn't have reduced the number of buses."
I don't think that is a certainty by any stretch if the last few days have been any indication.
The reduction in the number of buses, according to Tata, was a move made to hit a target to try to get more money according to some formula. It was not much different than deciding to go without janitorial service or a TA. The only thing is that when you cut a janitor, somebody else still cleans, but maybe it's not done quite as thoroughly. When you cut a TA, there's still a teacher in the classroom, she just has a tougher job.
When you cut a bus, though, another bus still has to come pick the kids up, so you don't necessarily save gas or mileage....you just pay one less driver and make ride times longer.
Bus drivers make $12 - $19 /
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 18:25 — jeffrey1Bus drivers make $12 - $19 / hour, about $15,000 - $20,000. I'd say that's significant.
Also, it is much more effective to run buses at or near capacity, then it is to run them 1/3 full. Recall that bus stats for previous years showed an average ridership less than 25 for a bus that has a capacity of 44-66 (depending on ES, MS, HS).
We went round and round
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 23:02 — danofncWe went round and round about this last year, and I have no desire to rehash it all over again.
I told you then that filling all the buses would lead to much longer ride times and that those longer ride times would result in a lot of unhappy parents.
If you pay one bus driver to drive 20 total miles and pick up 46 kids and it takes them an hour, you don't really save much money if you used to pay two drivers to drive 10 total miles and pick up 23 kids each while taking 30 minutes. It's not like the buses disappeared....they are still available.
The biggest problem is likely the state's efficiency formula. If it is designed to measure efficiency for the majority of NC's districts, it isn't very likely to accurately represent WCPSS' efficiency because WCPSS is so much different than a typical NC school district.
So...
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 23:55 — Bob_SconceThe thing that, so far, appears to be making parents the most unhappy isn't really the long ride times. Instead, it's the waits at either end, where buses either never pick up kids or do so, just an hour or two late.
I don't think the setup is as you describe. Here's an example of how it could be different: Before, two buses went through a neighborhood, one going to school X (say, a middle school) and one going to school Y (say, a high school). Now, one bus goes through the neighborhood, picking up kids for both schools, drops 1/2 off at one and 1/2 off at the other. Only slightly longer distance, but definitely a fuller bus.
So, there are probably 50
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 07:36 — danofncSo, there are probably 50 examples that we could trot out, and each would be slightly different.
Your example obviously makes sense, and is quite different than mine. Of course, the likelihood that the one bus in your example is the only bus going through the neighborhood is remote. At the same time, if the two hypothetical schools were 3 miles apart, and the neighborhood was in the middle, the combined mileage of two buses would be the same as the mileage for two buses, and you wouldn't be risking having the kids at the second school being late one or two (or more) days per week.
It all comes down to what your idea of "efficient" is with regards to busing. I'd rather have things set up so that no kid had to be on a bus more than 30 minutes unless they were at a magnet school a long way from home. I would consider that efficient. I would consider that a benefit to the district.
The wait-time before or after school is directly related to how fully the buses are being loaded. If a bus has 25 or 30 stops on its first morning or afternoon run, that is 25 or 30 potential delays that can throw off a very tight timeline....which is how you end up with kids sitting at an elementary school for 45 minutes to an hour (at least) after the bell rings for them to go home or getting to school 30 minutes or an hour after school has started.
So...
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 10:33 — Bob_SconceI like your definition of 'efficient.' I'll point out, though, that you're optimizing for a different thing than the State is optimizing for in its definition.
I will be very curious to see where things went wrong. The district came up with a set of 800-some bus route that said "At time XXX, arive at stop 1. At time YYY, arrive at stop 2." Is the problem that there wasn't enough time between XXX and YYY? Is the problem that the district's chosen route is impossible? Is the problem that the bus driver didn't know about Stop 1?
The GPS system should show all of that. I'm curious if the GPS-equipped buses had the same rate of problems as the non-equipped buses.
There are some areas where I
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 12:19 — danofncThere are some areas where I think the 5-10 biggest districts in NC (and especially, the biggest two) should be judged by a different standard than the rest of the state's districts.
This busing efficiency is one of those things. The district that I grew up in has 7000 students today, spread out over the entire county. There are 6 elementary schools, which is really probably closer to four/five in a comparison with WCPSS (two of the elementary schools are only k-3, and they both feed into one elementary school that is only 4th and 5th). There are 4 MS and 3 HS (not counting a alternative school and a small Early College HS).
Their busing should look decidedly different than WCPSS', and a formula designed to measure the efficiency of busing isn't likely to be able to accurately reflect both district's performance.
Their website says they have 116 buses covering 6900 miles a day while transporting 4300 students. Thats 59.5 miles a day per bus, and 37 kids per bus. Wake's website doesn't seem to have been updated lately, and it doesn't have daily mileage listed, but it says that WCPSS transports 75,000 kids a day on 900 buses. That's 83 kids per bus. If that's 3 runs of 15 miles and 27 or 28 kids each, that's still ~15 fewer miles and ~45 more kids than Edgecombe County.
I don't know where ECPS and WCPSS fall on the efficiency scale, but Wake should be smoking them.
Convinced Yet?
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 08:01 — jeffrey1If you pay one bus driver to drive 20 total miles and pick up 46 kids and it takes them an hour, you don't really save much money if you used to pay two drivers to drive 10 total miles and pick up 23 kids each while taking 30 minutes.
WCPSS administration is reporting this morning that adding the 4 additional buses will cost $250,000. Convinced?
There are a bunch of reports
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 08:50 — DrActualFactualThere are a bunch of reports on "TIMS" that NC uses to examine efficiency rates and usage for school buses and routes across NC. I can't find the 96 page report I read last night but there are several on the ncbussafety.org site that discuss the formula used for "efficiency" and all the ways they look at staggering school bell schedules, combining routes, detriments of having kids drop out and carpool instead of taking the bus(it reduces the overall efficiency grade that NC assigns you after all the data is gathered.) There is a smaller version of the report entitled "Using TIMS to Boost Productivity." The reports cover ride times for every county in NC. It shows not only current data but much of the philosophy and mindset behind the 3-tier, two-tier, etc. of developing bus routes around bell schedules and assignment plans/areas. Ironically, it operates out of NCSU for DPI. See also, ITRE. Bob, Dan, Jeffrey...happy reading. (Particulary enjoyed their slide on (paraphrasing)..even though it (7:30 start time for HS) goes against all data at least the kids won't miss time for being dismissed early for athletic events.) Parents should read this just to get a true picture of all the data collected and returned that govern bus route planning and efficiency in transportation operations.
Read up on TIMS about a year
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 09:48 — jeffrey1Read up on TIMS about a year or so ago. If I recall, otpimization was by ride time only and did not allow you to choose other parameters (e.g. ridership optimization) to optmize routes.
The GPS devices allowed Charlotte to save something like $6 million in first year or use (another report I read at least a year ago). I think when installation is completed later next month, Wake will be able to optimize even more.
Exactly! All transportation
Fri, 08/31/2012 - 00:49 — jeffrey1Exactly! All transportation providers (air, rail, bus) know that increasing ridership is one way to to improve efficiency.
And while there seems to be plenty of horror stories out there, I recall many years (especially those high growth years 6-8 years ago) when the first week of school brought similar headaches. We drove our kids, and their friends to school for the first few days in a couple of those years.
I'm willing to give the WCPSS transportation department a couple of weeks to iron out their problems (I hear that GPS devices will be in all buses by the end of September). I expect that busing delays will not even be in the news by then.
It would be interesting
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 18:05 — SatchHHto compare the previous plan in terms of bussing with the choice plan. From what I've heard, many buses now are packed to overflowing and are going to multiple schools, etc. With those strategies and the old plan, we may have been able to have fewer buses on the road that what they have out there now. I'm not against busing at all - I think it is a great way to create balanced schools. I rode the bus when I was young, rode long distances, and did my homework on the bus. However, I think the choice plan is getting us toward segregated schools, which I see as way worse than any bus ride.
" I'm not against busing at
Thu, 08/30/2012 - 21:27 — Apexter" I'm not against busing at all - I think it is a great way to create balanced schools. I rode the bus when I was young, rode long distances, and did my homework on the bus. "
I rode the bus long distances when I was young, and watched other young women being molested by older boys on the bus, and lived in terror that one day they would turn their attentions to me.
I would have loved to have done my homework on the bus, but if I tried to read in a moving motor vehicle, I would have ended up with severe motion sickness and vomited up my guts, which is hardly conducive to maintaining a low profile. (Though it certainly would have made me a less attractive target for molestation, at least on the days I was covered in vomit.)
Um...
Wed, 08/29/2012 - 09:39 — Bob_SconceI think the buses are owned by the state.
Better idea
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 19:59 — FSandYOUEither widen the "walk area" around schools by double
or
those of you using the bus system can foot the bill.
Cowboy...
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 19:12 — bpuli9999up!
Marilyn Avila
Tue, 08/28/2012 - 14:16 — bpuli9999is married to Alex Avila, who is the CFO of Measurement Inc. - a contractor to WCPSS and who is on the board of NC Education Reform that pays John Tedesco's salary. What a small world it is.