LPS School Bus News

As our district has been experiencing declining enrollment, staff shortages, and bell time changes, it became imperative that we review our routes for efficiencies to ensure we are properly loading our buses, reducing routes, and ensuring that our routes are timely so our students arrive at school on time and ready to learn.

We began the work of combining routes and finding creative ways to transport our students as a result of our shortages over the past two years. This work made it quite clear that we needed to take a closer look and make some significant and permanent adjustments. Although providing bus service for our general education student population is not guaranteed, it is an important service that our school board and district leadership want to continue. We know many of our families (4,000+) rely on our service and appreciate this support; therefore, our job is to ensure we do all we can to keep it safe, efficient, and available!

Our staffing shortages and the adjustment to our bell times last year resulted in canceled routes, students arriving late to school, increased parent transportation, district staff working longer hours to care for students after school, increased costs to provide a second-run system, additional students added to contracted service rides, and other strains on our system. Below, you will find details regarding this necessary work to ensure we can continue providing this important service.

Efficiency Study Objectives:

• Provide an excellent, safe service for our students so they can arrive at school on time.
• Ensure we honor our Board-determined walking boundaries throughout the district:
  • 1 mile for elementary
  • 1.5 miles for middle school and high school
• Reduce costs for general education transportation.
• Reduce routes to improve our ability to provide services without disruption and load our buses properly.
• Minimize our use of contracted service rides, especially for our general education students.
• Remove stops inside neighborhoods when possible, reducing wear and tear on streets and improving route flow, which in turn improves our timeliness to schools and homes in the afternoon.
• Ensure we have safe locations following CDE guidelines.
• Reduce stops as too many stops increase the number of times students cross streets and extend the route by 2-5 minutes.
• Although the maximum capacity for our large school buses is 77, we set our parameters in the study to load high school buses at a maximum of 55, middle school buses at a maximum of 65, and elementary buses at a maximum of 75 to avoid initial overloads and minimize overcrowding.
• Reduce student ride times when possible, with the goal of a maximum ride time of 40 minutes.

Unknown Factor—Actual Student Ridership

We attempted to gather ridership information this school year with our IT department, and out of 4,000+ bus riders, we received approximately 1,000 responses. We will work toward finding better ways to gather this information in the future, but this remains an unknown factor until students actually begin riding. Once actual ridership is determined, we will make the necessary adjustments to ensure that the locations can handle the increased number of students in some areas.

Our routing software shows us where all the eligible students are located, but without knowing who is actually riding, we need additional time to collect data before making adjustments. This unknown factor may also impact loads, resulting in temporary overload situations.

Work Completed:

• A district route study was completed using AI technology by an outside company to assess foundational pieces, including the most efficient paths, prior year student counts, stop consolidation suggestions, etc.
• Personalized review via our routing software for stop moves and removals.
• On-location review by staff in areas that were questionable.
• Driving checks done by our drivers and staff to ensure efficiency in flow and timing.
• Changes made to reduce the number of left-hand turns onto busy roadways when possible.
• Additional and/or moving stops from our busier roadways in some areas.
• Review of last year's counts in comparison to eligibility; for example, our routing software may show that 100 students are eligible to ride in some areas, but the counts will demonstrate that only 20 actually rode the prior school year.
• Over 20 adjustments/additions have already been made in the first couple of weeks due to safety concerns.

Current Results:

• Reduced over 100 stops within our district to increase efficiency and timeliness, ensuring we arrive at schools on time.
• Reduced 4 general education routes, decreasing the need for 4 drivers and avoiding the need to start the school year on a cancellation rotation plan; we currently have all routes covered.
• Some students have a further distance to walk than in the past due to the changes, but nothing extends past the Board-determined walking boundaries.
• All students placed on contracted rides due to last year's severe shortages have been placed back on buses.
• Changes have improved our ability to service many of our students who utilize special transportation by transporting them on buses instead of using contracted services.

Work Yet to Do:

• Collect data regarding actual ridership and make adjustments as necessary and possible.
• Priority focuses:
  • Move stops when necessary to address safety concerns; all stops have been checked to ensure they follow CDE regulations, but some areas will require second reviews with actual ridership considered/observed.
  • Add stops when necessary to ensure stop locations can accommodate student counts.
  • Shift stops to equalize ridership and avoid overload situations whenever possible.
  • The order of focus is to make any necessary changes and improvements first for our elementary-aged students, followed by middle school, and lastly high school.

Considerations Moving Forward:

• Safety is our top priority. Often, safety concerns are raised with our elementary students; please consider supporting us by helping students cross streets and monitoring stop locations, as many families are already present.
• For every stop we add, we increase the route by 2-5 minutes. Adding stops to elementary routes may require earlier stop times, resulting in students getting up earlier and longer rides.
• For every stop we make, we potentially increase the safety risk to our students, as stopping repeatedly along a roadway increases student crossing locations and public frustration, which can lead to running red lights.
• Adding stops results in increased wear and tear on vehicles, higher idling time, and increased fuel costs.
• Entering neighborhoods multiple times a day with multiple buses impacts the wear and tear on streets.
• Many neighborhoods have no sidewalks, curves, and other challenges. We will continue to review the few areas that still need monitoring, but parent support is vital for safety in these areas.

Last year we started the utilization of this RFID card system on our buses as a pilot program focused on our elementary and middle school-aged students. This program provided us with the ability to improve our safety, improve our communication, and improve our ability to manage our students behaviors better.

Once we have established actual ridership, we will be passing these cards out for this school year. The card stays with your student from year to year. Last year we collected as many as we could at the end of the school year. We have started the process of getting them back in the hands of our students to make the loading process much quicker!

Drivers are currently manually adding students at this time, which we understand at many stops is causing delays, but this will be rectified very soon. We do apologize that this is impacting some routes in being late as the drivers and students get into the routine, but the work ensures the safety of the students riding and that is our #1 priority.

We plan to make available the Parent Portal in October. This will give parents the ability to see where the bus is and receive communications regarding delays.

We are currently providing cards, clips and replacement cards for free of charge, but there may be a charge for students who require multiple replacements moving forward.

I will be sharing more information regarding SMARTtag throughout the school year. If your student needs a replacement card their driver will let our team know and we will make them as needed.