Warren County School bus routes have parents frustrated, schools working to solve issues

FRONT ROYAL – As the second week of classes are underway in Warren County Public Schools, many families are settling into routines. The school year has brought a host of new things to students, new teachers, new subjects, and for some, a new school. It has also brought new bus routes to the county’s growing system.

WCPS Superintendent Greg Drescher said that a new school means new routes. He said in a Friday email, “Hundreds of new stops have been created since school ended last year.  Assimilating these stops into the bus runs creates timing issues. Adjusting takes a couple of days.”

Drescher said it’s hard for the school system to get a handle on how many students actually ride each bus until the end of the second day of school. That, he said, was due to the fact that many parents drive their children to school on the first day. Buses that were not full on the first day could have suddenly been crowed on the second day as the regular riders began boarding the bus for transport to and from school.

Drescher says that if buses are overcrowded while loading at schools at day’s end, another bus is being called to take care of the issue. He wrote in the email, “If there are still buses that are overcrowded please let transportation know. We have changed several routes to handle over crowding issues.”

Most drivers had new routes, which they practiced, the superintendent said. However, it is a different story loading students, particularly in the first few days. Drescher said, “Parents want to ask the driver a question, want to take a picture, a student takes a few minutes to get from their front door… all of these things compound a route.”

While parents may still have frustrations, the superintendent recalled that prior to this year, “we have had some students waiting at school for their buses at the end of the day for 40-45 minutes and that we had bus runs as long as 90 minutes.”

Drescher said that as the new bus route system gets fully corrected no students should wait over 20 minutes at school and no bus route should exceed 50-60 minutes.

Drescher, himself a parent, said, “I hear the frustrations. Believe me we all want it to be fixed. Every routing issue is being worked on as quickly as possible.  We aren’t quite there yet, but within a few days it will be.