PUYALLUP, Wash. — The Puyallup School District is still struggling to get its students to school on time. Parents are getting notices of canceled bus runs, sometimes on the day of the cancelation.
“It’s a scramble to get the kids to school and at a lot of schools, there’s not a great place to drop the kids off and there’s a bottleneck and traffic, and so you have to be more flexible than you have in the past,” said Dan Robbs, who has a child in the Puyallup School District.
Sarah Gillispie, executive director of Communications of the Puyallup School District, says it’s because the district is having trouble recruiting bus drivers.
“Prior to the pandemic, we had about 145 bus drivers, currently we have about 110,” she reported.
Gillispie says it’s a problem school districts are seeing across the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
“Since January, we’ve had over 3,500 students impacted by canceled bus runs alone, so clearly this is not sustainable,” she said.
The district is now getting more creative with how it uses its transportation resources. The school board unanimously approved the new bell schedule on April 5 in a move to increase efficiency.
“By moving to a different bell schedule model, the district can ensure that each school bus is used three times every morning and afternoon to increase efficiencies,” Gillispie said.
Gillispie says the changes will go into effect during the next school year, and the new bell schedule can be found on the school district’s website.
But some parents like Dobbs are still skeptical about how effective this change will be.
“There’s still x amount of kids that have to get from point a to point b,” he said. “A new schedule? I don’t know if that’ll streamline anything, I hope it does, but I don’t see how that’s going happen.”