COLUMBUS – When they return from their winter break, the more than 38,000 students who ride buses in the state’s largest school district will find things have changed.
Starting Jan. 3, kids who ride buses to school in the Columbus City Schools will likely have new bus drivers, new pick-up and drop-off times, and new bus stop locations, all as a way of dealing with a national shortage of bus drivers and a routing software problem.
“It’s about trying to make sure that every student has a bus e ach morning and afternoon to safely get to school and back home,” Scott Varner, the district’s executive director of Parent and Student Engagement, told members of the Board of Education at their regular meeting Tuesday.
The district will contact parents six times in the next month with information on its Transportation Reliability Improvement Measures.
In addition to emails and text messages to families with the new routes and schedule and detailed information on its website, the district is sending out approximately 38,000 letters via the postal service and the district’s Transportation Call Center will remain open during most of the winter break to help answer families’ questions, even though schools are closed. Parents can call 614-365-5074 for the latest information.
The district is also implementing a new system for notifying families via email and text message when buses are delayed.
A new direct communication tool called EZDistrict will be used to send emails and text messages directly to parents when a bus route is delayed or when no bus is available for that route.