Brandywine Community Schools working to address bus driver shortage while student pickups are delayed

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Niles Township, Mich. – Class has already been in session for a week at Brandywine Community Schools, but the year kicked off to a bumpy start for the kids who have to ride the bus.

“We’ve never really had a bus issue up until this year,” said Kahli Lorenz, a parent with children in the district.

On August 29—the first day of school—parents took to Facebook, worrying about the long waits their kids experienced between getting picked up and dropped off—some of them waited for over an hour!

“It is concerning because some parents who, obviously, don’t have any other way to get their children to and from school,” Lorenz said.

The district’s superintendent, Travis Walker, messaged parents about the issue, and told them that they are working to solve the problem, to which there are many factors—chief among them a lack of bus drivers available.

“We have seven routes, so right now we have four drivers in operation,” Walker said. “Which means we have drivers that are doubling up routes and picking up kids that are not typically in their routes.”

Walker said ideally the district would have at least nine drivers available to cover those routes, and even though they just hired one more driver, another went on medical leave, meaning they only have about half the staff they need.

Still, Walker said the issues on the first day of school were, in part, due to a driver running late, and that they are working to adapt.

“If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s really helped us to identify some holes in our processes, and establish those processes moving forward and making sure that we don’t run into those issues in the future.”

Walker added that five people applied for the job over the weekend, and he applauded his current staff of drivers for stepping up and working extra hard to get students back and forth safely.


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