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Late buses disrupt start of school day

New stops, the choice plan and a driver shortage plague an overhauled Pinellas transportation system.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published December 19, 2005

Midway through a school year that started with thousands of parents jamming a hot line for bus problems, the Pinellas school bus system remains a sore spot.

Late and no-show buses, usually an issue in the first few weeks of school, continued to be a problem several weeks into the semester. A fall survey by the district found that 5 percent of the fleet - or about 100 buses - consistently arrived late to school, causing daily disruption in many classrooms.

As schools prepared last week to close for winter break, a number of buses still were running late. The district has not conducted another survey to find the number of buses involved or exactly how late they were.

In another setback, plans fell through in September for a $2.26-million system that would have used global positioning and biometric technology to keep real-time track of buses and young riders. Contractors could not make the system work as envisioned.

Beyond those issues, the bus system continues to grab more than its share of the spotlight with the kind of random, high-profile incidents that sidetrack district officials for days.

In November, an off-duty police officer handcuffed and roughly handled a 13-year-old girl aboard a district bus. The vehicle's videotape system recorded the incident. Last week, officials responded to allegations that a driver put duct tape over the mouth of a 5-year-old boy. Video would have come in handy as district officials tried to verify the kindergartener's story, but the recording system on the bus was down for maintenance.

The parents of both students have hired lawyers.

"Nothing's ever simple," said school superintendent Clayton Wilcox, clearly frustrated about the rocky first semester.

It's far from a replay of last school year, when two students were killed in separate traffic accidents after exiting Pinellas buses. The deaths of Rebecca McKinney and Brooke Ingoldsby prompted firings, suspensions, lawsuits and a redesign of the district's transportation department.

Still, this year's problems have the School Board asking questions and Wilcox working over the holidays to improve a bus system that many thought was fixed after last year's troubles. He said last week he has directed the transportation department to make adjustments, such as consolidating routes, to address the problem of late buses.

"We're just going to have to be smarter," Wilcox said. "I think we can have on-time delivery. I have seen nothing that says to me that we can't. We're just going to have to keep at it."

Officials say three factors are contributing to the late buses.

Topping the list is an acute shortage of bus drivers, a problem affecting districts nationwide. School systems are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with employers who offer better pay and driving jobs that don't involve rowdy students.

Another factor is the choice plan, which spreads the bus system thin with its promise of a wide selection of schools for most students.

The third factor was the district's decision last summer to add 3,000 new bus stops and move thousands more stops off busy roads - a response to safety concerns raised in the two student deaths. Wilcox said the district spent so much time on making routes safe that it probably didn't concentrate enough on making them efficient.

The district called on drivers and supervisors to work together to streamline routes as the year wore on, but Wilcox said those efforts appear to have waned. "Honestly, I think we're getting a little complacent, and that's not something we can do," he said.

District transportation director Anthony Dzielski said, "We've got to work to improve the 5 percent" of buses that are late. But he also said there's a flip side: "That means 95 percent of the buses are on time. They're there by the bell."

Any large transportation system has some lateness, Dzielski said, citing U.S. airlines as one example. The industry's on-time performance hovers around 80 percent, meaning 20 percent of planes are late every day, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In Hillsborough County, which also suffers from a driver shortage, about 10 percent of school buses arrive each morning after their scheduled time. Some are as much as 20 to 30 minutes behind schedule, said Karen Strickland, general manager of transportation for the district.

Dzielski said he expects the situation in Pinellas to improve soon. The system needs to boost its driving corps to 853, up from the current 800, to make up for routine absences. He said more than 45 new drivers are in various stages of training and will be ready to step in shortly after classes resume in January.

They will be "rookies" who will be slow at first on their routes, and the influx still won't cover the load. But it's better than before, Dzielski said.

Robert Ammon, the principal at Southern Oak Elementary in Largo, said on-time performance already is better than earlier this semester. Two months into the school year, he said, one bus was arriving an hour late every day, he said.

"It's disruptive because teachers have already started the flow of the day, and as these children come in, you kind of have to back up and make sure they get the same thing," he said.

Now the same bus is only one or two minutes late, Ammon said. "It has improved quite a bit."

--Times staff writer Vanessa De La Torre contributed to this report.

[Last modified December 19, 2005, 01:38:18]