ANNE ARUNDEL — School transportation has been very difficult for Anne Arundel county schools since the beginning of the year, now they are making moves to give partial relief.
"The fear is that he's going to be waiting for his bus and not know that it got cancelled,” said Joseph Portor, whose son is in 6th grade at Lindale Middle.
Its a similar fear many parents are facing in Anne Arundel county and across Baltimore as there is a shortage of school bus drivers-- resulting in a shortage in school bus routes.
"They miss breakfast a lot because the bus is late because there isn't enough buses so by the time they get to school they're late to class and they get in trouble with their teachers,” Jennifer Phillips Patterson, son in 6th grade at Lindale middle.
Starting Monday October 17th-- Anne Arundel County is trying to alleviate some of that stress.
40 buses will be extending their routes to areas that currently have no bus service at all.
"The reason they've been no service routes so far is that the buses that we'll be utilizing run extended runs for the high schools to the point where they can't do both the morning and the afternoon,” said Bob Mosier, AACPS Chief Communications officer.
It's a partial solution to the problem-- the new routes will provide either a morning service to middle school students or an afternoon service to elementary students.
"It is half a solution where a family that has to now take their student to school and pick their student up may now only have to do one of those and can adjust their work schedule or whatever other schedule that they have,” said Mosier.
Public schools transportation office is doing this by transferring the small number of special needs students to smaller passenger vans-- which will not require a cdl license for transporting.
In return this frees up some buses and drivers to run a longer route.
But the areas of the additional routes have not been finalized yet
"The factors that will go into this are the needs of the school, the existing impact on the school by no service routes, the needs of the students in the community and we're going to look at this through an equity lens so that we can eliminate as many barriers as possible,” said Mosier.
Families will be notified of the final routes before they go into effect.
