Cape sets new bus routes, stops

Cape Henlopen School District is scrapping its flawed bus route system for a new one.

"This past week we audited all of our bus routes and changed pickup and drop-off times for close to 2,000 students," said Superintendent Kevin Carson.

The changes will go into effect Monday. Route schedules were sent home with students Sept. 15.

Since day one of the school year, the district office has been inundated with phone calls from irate parents who say their children are riding the buses for hours each way or have been assigned bus stops at dangerous intersections.

A new computerized system of plotting bus routes was blamed for the problems. Carson said he didn't know why the system broke down from last year, but he intends to find out.

"When everything settles down, we're going to go back and look at it and see where the problems occurred," he said.

An increase of 256 students riding the buses this year quickly overloaded the system. About 150 new students enrolled after Aug. 15, Carson said.

The Department of Education on Sept. 14 approved the use of five more buses to transport district children, adding five more routes. This should reduce ride times up to half an hour each way for some students, Carson said.

Because a significant number of new students live in the Milton area, two new buses will be added there. One will be added to Rehoboth Elementary School, and one is assigned to the high school. As of Wednesday, Carson was not sure where the fifth bus would go.

Parents have been vocal about walking routes where there are no sidewalks. Children must be in a safe walking zone or the district will pick them up, Carson said.

Still, he said, some previous bus riders will become walkers.

"I think we bused a whole lot of people whether it was appropriate or not or legal or not, I don't know," he said. "It's been there for decades."

Each new bus comes at a local cost of about $5,000 each, Carson said, for an additional expense to the current budget of roughly $25,000.

This year's cut in state transportation funds, however, had nothing to do with the busing situation, and everything to do with the computerized routing system, Carson said.

"We're not in the position we're in today because there was a budget cut," he said.

One area where Carson said the district could have done a better job was informing the parents about the bus-route changes.

"It's our responsibility to communicate as far in advance as possible to let our community and parents know what we're doing, especially when you're implementing a major system change with a new transportation system," he said. "We just simply didn't do a good job."

And while the timing of the latest bus route change may not be much better, Carson said, he presently has a tighter time frame to fix the bus system.

Now, it's going to be like starting school all over again; Carson said it's going to take several days to get everything worked out.

In the meantime, he asks for continued patience from district families.

"My hope would be by the end of next week we're in a much better position."