WASHINGTON — For weeks, dozens of buses used to serve D.C. school students with disabilities have been routinely delayed picking up and dropping off children. Data shows the problem doesn’t seem to be getting any better either.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) organizes busing school students with special needs in D.C.
On Jan. 17 at 7:30 a.m., OSSE said 82 school bus routes in D.C. either had a longer ride time than normal or a delayed pickup time. On Monday at 7:30 a.m., OSSE data showed 87 bus routes in D.C. dealing with similar issues. Over that 10-day span, on average, 82 OSSE bus routes were reported late or delayed at 7:30 a.m.
Unreliable bus services have impacted families across the District looking to get their children to school on time. OSSE says more than 3,700 students with disabilities use the buses on more than 530 routes.
Northwest D.C. parent DeLelia Kelly said her 11-year-old son, who has special needs, has been dealing with delayed busing the entire school year.
Kelly said her son’s bus showed up at 8:30 a.m. Monday. Her son’s school also starts classes at that same time.
“Either the bus is extremely late [or] they don’t show up,” she said.
Kelly also claimed she had no idea where her child was for an hour, last week, due to OSSE busing.
She said a bus was supposed to pick her son up from school on Wednesday at 3 pm. But Kelly said the bus arrived an hour-and-a-half late.
The D.C. resident said she never received any communication about the late pickup and could not get a clear answer as to exactly where her child was before her persistent calling of officials got her answers.
“When they arrived to the school, they didn’t have their manifest, so they didn’t know which children belonged on the route,” Kelly said.
WUSA9 contacted OSSE for comment on Kelly’s case and why so many buses were being delayed in the first place.
The agency provided the following statement:
“We are working very hard to address the labor shortage that is currently causing disruptions and delays to student transportation, while aggressively hiring drivers and attendants to grow our workforce. On February 16 and 17, OSSE DOT will hold a two-day hiring fair, and we urge prospective drivers and attendants to register on OSSE’s website. We apologize to our families for these service disruptions and will work with them to provide support if they decide to drive their children to school.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser appoints the superintendent role. She apologized to families impacted by the delays on Monday too.
“We are trying to improve the attendance of our current work force, while at the same time, growing our workforce,” she said. “So, I have to apologize to our parents for the inconvenience.
D.C. is hardly alone in the region when it comes to dealing with a short-staffed bus system.
Prince George’s, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties are just a few of the local communities that have dealt with staffing shortages in the last few years.
Currently, OSSE says it has 25 drivers and attendants in the final stages of the pre-employment process, but it still needs more of those employees to be fully staffed.
The office said it’s combining routes and adding more children to bus routes to make things work in the interim. It added, as a last resort, it has occasionally even dropped or not serviced some routes.
OSSE is offering reimbursement for parents who decide to drive their children to school or hire rideshare to do so.
However, some parents, like Kelly, say the latter is not a feasible option for families who have students with special needs.
She said, “My child also doesn’t like new people, so putting him in a rideshare wouldn’t be good for him."