Whitney Donald said she was “shocked” when she learned last week that the Henderson County Schools transportation department wouldn’t be bussing South Heights students in her neighborhood to school. And her neighbors were, too, she said.
“They were outraged by it,” said Donald, a mother of a kindergartener, second-grader and fourth-grader at the school. She said she and neighbors felt like Henderson County Schools had informed them too close to the start of school about the change of a policy that had been in place for years and one they didn’t know would change.
“If we would have been notified of the policy in advance, it wouldn’t have been such a shock,” she said.
Donald was one of dozens of concerned parents and citizens who attended a Tuesday night meeting at Audubon Kids Zone to discuss solutions about the policy that has since been changed.
For about a week, the proposed stoppage of bus service for students living within the areas from Sand Lane to Washington Street and Alvasia Street to Atkinson Street had been a major concern for affected parents and guardians and a priority for local school and government officials after receiving complaints about the stoppage of bus service to the area.
The first contact with parents and guardians came on July 31 when Dr. Bob Lawson, the superintendent of HCS, sent a letter to neighborhood parents and guardians informing them that bus service in the area could not occur and that students living there would become walkers or car-riders.
This in effect would move the affected area into the same policy the district has for all schools: Students who live within a 1-mile radius of every other school in the district are walkers or car-riders. It’s never been that way in the area highlighted in Lawson’s letter. School officials said safety concerns in the area have been the driving factor in keeping bus service going in the East End area.
This year, though, the loss of two more bus drivers from an already depleted driving corps forced HCS to discontinue transportation service to students in the area. Or so they thought.
After hearing from the community, the school system partnered with city and county governments in search of a solution.
By Tuesday, a day before school began, they’d found one, albeit a temporary band-aid that can’t fix the long-term crisis of the bus driver shortage that HCS, as well as myriad school districts in the state and nation, are facing. Lawson in the Tuesday evening meeting said HCS transportation department is down 15 bus drivers.
For now, a city of Henderson HART bus will pick up students at the south corner of Powell and Julia streets in front of Metzger’s Tavern at 6:35 a.m. and then move to the corner of Powell and Mill streets to pick up students at about 6:37.
The HART bus will then take the first group of students to South Heights, drop them off, and then circle back to the same two stops, the corner of Powell and Julia streets at 6:50 and on again to the corner of Powell and Mill streets at 6:52., before another drop off at South Heights.
School and city officials Tuesday night said students do not have to pay city bus fares and that parents of kindergarteners will be able to ride free with their children on the first day of school. Mayor Brad Staton said that could be extended beyond the first day of school.
A school system news release on Tuesday alerted students and parents that traffic does not stop for HART buses as it does for school buses, so students should wait on the proper corner and be prepared to enter on the door side—not from across the street.
In the afternoon, the students will be picked up by a school bus and dropped off at the same locations. This comes from a temporary agreement with Henderson County government.
At Tuesday morning’s Fiscal Court meeting, Judge-Executive Brad Schneider said county Road Department employee Lana Goins agreed to take a school bus route in the afternoon. He said Goins will work seven hours in the morning for the county and then take the bus route in the afternoon.
Goins was a former bus driver for the department of transportation at HCS, so she has all the necessary licenses, Schneider said.
Donald said she was satisfied with the outcome that transportation will be continued to be provided, at least temporarily.
“They’ve done what they could do,” she said.
Before the last-minute fix was in place, she and neighbors planned together a way to get their children to school.
Others in the neighborhood were looking for ways to help. Washington Street resident Tre Perkins said he sent out a Facebook message, asking if anyone was interested in taking turns walking children to school. He said he’d received ten responses by Tuesday night.
Residents offered many ideas for a more permanent fix to the school’s transportation department problems Tuesday evening. Mike Austin, a longtime bus driver for HART just recently retired, supplied an idea for HART buses to continue to pick up students into the future.
“The (HART) bus service is very under-utilized,” he said, adding there would be room for students.
Another suggestion was that a longer time between the start of school for the secondary and elementary/middle schools could allow for a bus driver to deliver one group of students early and then turn around a deliver another group of students later.
Lawson opened up his comments with an apology that the initial letter informing parents and guardians came so close to the start of school, adding the district was searching for solutions all the way to the day the letter was sent.
“Let me first apologize for that,” he said, adding though that he was grateful for a Henderson community that works together to find solutions.
“We all want what’s best for our kids,” he said. “This will not be perfect on day one, but our effort will remain the same … to find a more permanent solution.”
