ST. LOUIS — Some high school students would take MetroBus and several schools would shift schedules under an emergency plan to reduce bus routes in ºüÀêÊÓƵ Public Schools starting in August.
District leaders are scrambling this summer to fix a transportation crisis and driver shortage that led to an average of 20 school bus routes canceled daily last school year.
About 70 buses will be eliminated in the fall, or one-third of the total needed to transport about 14,000 students, said Ashley Davies of consultant Better Education Partners, based in Washington state.
The consultant’s plan is “framed as stabilization for the coming school year,†Davies told the SLPS board during a meeting this week. Students who have transportation needs in their special education plans and those who are homeless will have priority, she said.
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The plan includes five main strategies for the board to vote on at its meeting Tuesday:
- Change school start and end times to create three tiers 65 minutes apart: Schools will be distributed evenly to start in the 7 a.m., 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. hours and end in the 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. hours. Spacing out the tiers allows one driver to drive to schools on all three schedules. The schools that will have their schedules changed were not released.
- Public transit for high school students: A subset of high school students that meet certain criteria will be given passes to ride MetroBus. The students would not be required to transfer buses, and must live within a certain distance from the bus stop. The district’s school resource officers or MetroBus security could be assigned to bus stops and on buses.
- Opt-out campaign for parents who can drive: The district is surveying parents to see who can provide their own transportation. “A major source of inefficiency is students not riding a bus who are assigned a seat,†Davies said.
- Reduce the number of stops: Consolidating stops would mean a longer walk to the bus stop but would reduce the ride time to and from school. Currently, more than half of the one-way trips take between 45 minutes and one hour, according to the district.
- Strategic routing: Students fill 44% of bus seats on the average trip. About half of the trips have fewer than 18 riders. One-quarter of the trips have fewer than nine riders, which means they could be assigned to a 10-passenger van instead of a bus.
The five-point plan is the latest in an ongoing effort to address the crisis exacerbated in the spring when bus company Missouri Central decided to terminate its contract with the district one year early. Parents received gas cards or cash in May to drive their kids to the last two weeks of school. Earlier this month, all SLPS staff were asked about their willingness to drive school buses this fall, a request that district leaders later said was not intended for teachers.
The SLPS board has approved plans to work this fall with 19 transportation vendors, which include several day care centers and churches with vans. The largest vendor, First Student, will include a fraction of the buses it provided before the district ended that partnership in 2022.
Transportation in SLPS has long been an inefficient and expensive undertaking. The cost per bus of $113,230 is nearly double the national median of $57,612 for urban school districts, according to district records.
The district’s large number of magnet schools means students are regularly bused across the city instead of walking to a neighborhood school. And many of the SLPS buildings are only half full. There are 16,542 students in kindergarten through high school across the district’s 68 schools. By comparison, Rockwood School District in west ºüÀêÊÓƵ County has 19,424 students in 29 schools.
The school board’s meeting set for Tuesday was moved up a week to expedite the vote on the transportation plan.
“This is a very trying time for everyone right now,†said school board president Toni Cousins. “The families and staff need to know answers sooner rather than later.â€