South Bend Schools parents voice more transportation concerns

SOUTH BEND, Ind – South Bend schools parents are voicing their concerns about transportation for their children in the upcoming school year.

As the school year begins, parents aren’t sure whether they’ll have transportation for their children or not.  

Some parents were given a school bus assignment to an incorrect school, some were given a partial bus assignment, and some weren’t given an assignment at all leaving them searching for answers 

“Now that school is starting tomorrow he don’t have a bus to ride to school but he has a bus to ride home from school” Deneka Sneed of South Bend said of her son. 

As a part of the focus 2018 program South Bend Schools Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Spells said changes were made to try and iron out issues plaguing the bus system last year. 

“By pushing High School back 30-minutes, that will allow us to have more drivers. We condensed our routes a little bit. We went from a three-tier to a two-tier and going to this two-tier we think we’ll, well we know it will give us more drivers for the road, If we don’t do this we’ll need a lot more drivers.  

The South Bend Community School Corporation acknowledged there’s a problem and released a statement saying in part: “Our transportation department is working hard to correct any and all issues parents are having with their child’s bus in wake of the first day of school” 

ABC57 is told that over the summer South Bend’s school corporation hired more drivers and changed routes to help resolve some of the existing problem.