Callers are inundating the school district. Expect to wait for help. And if your problem isn't urgent, expect to wait some more.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN, Times Staff Writer
Published August 5, 2005
LARGO - Pinellas school officials were still struggling Thursday, the second day of classes, with a flood of calls about bus service.
But many of the calls were not urgent, they said, and were preventing the district's new call center from getting to families with more serious problems.
Too many parents, superintendent Clayton Wilcox said, are calling to complain that their child's bus stop is not at the same location as last year or is too far from their home. Over the summer, the district moved thousands of bus stops off busy roads to address safety concerns raised by the deaths of two students last year after they exited school buses.
While many parents understand the change, "unfortunately right now there's not enough of that," Wilcox said. "There are so many people who are calling us right now for convenience changes that literally others who have real needs can't get in."
Reports of late buses, missed routes and other problems continued to surface Thursday.
The district received about 4,000 calls from Monday through Wednesday at its call center, which is staffed by more than 30 people, most of them temporary workers.
The center had logged an additional 1,023 calls by late Thursday afternoon. Nearly 300 of those hung up while on hold for an average of about 15 minutes. The average wait time Thursday was about 23 minutes.
Wilcox also attributed the bottleneck to parents calling about sexual offenders living near bus stops. State law requires the district to locate stops 1,000 feet away from the homes of sexual predators.
But "not every sex offender is a predator," Wilcox said, noting that the predator label is affixed by judges.
The district will handle complaints about sexual predators first, Wilcox said. Later, when the call volume dies down, officials will deal with complaints about sex offenders, he said. He cautioned, however, that it won't be possible to keep bus stops away from every sex offender because they far outnumber sexual predators.
As is the case every year, families who wait until the first day of school to address problems also are clogging the system, the district said. Many calls are from families who last month received a postcard listing their bus stop but waited until this week to complain.
Others are from families who moved over the summer or are new to the county and received no postcard. When they register, it starts a chain reaction, said Kim Laughlin, who oversees the call center. Often the system must add a bus stop to accommodate new students, and every new stop creates a change in schedules. That requires the district to notify other families along a route, she said.
"It's a big process," Laughlin said. And it can take several days.
Laughlin and Wilcox also had a message for parents who are calling other district offices or sending e-mails when they don't get the answer they want from the call center: It doesn't work. Those calls and e-mails are sent back to the call center.
