PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — A day after 10,000 kids were left without a ride, Prince George’s County is still struggling to sort out its school bus issues.
On the second day of class, the district said it had seen some improvement, but many kids across the district still have not been assigned a bus route.
The bus problems have forced many parents to drop of their children at school, which created gridlock at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School. 7News found bumper-to-bumper traffic on Good Luck Road as buses and cars jockeyed to get into the only entrance to the school. Some buses jumped the curb and drove on the sidewalk to get around the crush of parents trying to drop off their kids.
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The district put out a statement reiterating that it has been having issues with a “backlog of students who needed to be routed or whose routes required adjustments.” School leaders said more staff have been assigned to resolving these issues.
The district would not give a deadline for when the transportation issues would be resolved.
“The transportation team is working through the backlog as quickly as possible, and we expect conditions to improve as routes are corrected and ridership stabilizes,” the district said in a statement. “We will provide regular updates on our progress and will be transparent about issues that remain unresolved.”
Despite these assurances, parents remain frustrated. One mother said the issues extended beyond the morning bus route for her children.
“There’s no bus assigned to us in the morning. There is a bus assigned to us in the evening, but it has yet to run,” she said. “Yesterday, students were (at school) until 6:30 (p.m.) when we received a text saying, ‘Come pick up your kids.'”
The district did include an apology to parents as part of its statement on the ongoing issues.
“We are sorry. We know that transportation is about more than buses and routes. Behind every route is a child, and behind every child is a family trusting us to get that child to school and home safely. For families whose children waited too long, experienced an unusually long ride, received incomplete information, or did not have the transportation experience they deserved, we recognize the frustration and disruption this caused,” the statement said.
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