Tampabay: Students may ride 2 buses to school

Thirty school buses filed into the parking lot. The engines were switched off and the back fence was closed, locking in all the buses and students. Then, lead bus driver Bonnie Carmichael announced it was time to move.

"Now the fun begins," she said Friday afternoon at the school district's bus transfer station near Hillsborough High School in Tampa.

For 10 minutes -- exactly -- students of all ages poured out of buses and scurried in all directions, trying to find their next bus. It looked like Chicago's O'Hare International Airport during the holidays -- chaotic, but controlled.

Almost as soon as it started, it was over. And nearly 2,000 students headed home for the weekend.

"It's rather uneventful, really," said Karen Strickland, general director of transportation for Hillsborough schools. "For the most part, the kids are really great."

If Pinellas School Board members approve an ambitious proposal to let parents choose their children's schools in 2003, some students will have to ride two buses to get to school. That means the bus transfers happening daily in Hillsborough and other districts around the nation would come to Pinellas.

Some students will still get direct bus routes from home to school, but others -- district transportation officials are not sure how many -- will ride shuttles, take public transportation or switch buses at schools or in large parking lots.

That last option paints a frightening picture for some Pinellas School Board members and parents. They envision children boarding the wrong bus or wandering away or -- even worse -- getting hurt or killed in the flurry of activity.

National school bus safety groups and districts with hubs say they can be safe and efficient, as long as they are well-organized and enough trained adults are on hand to supervise.

They don't know of any studies to support their claims -- but some, like Hillsborough's transportation director, say they would put their own children through transfer stations without worries.

"If no other vehicles are moving around, no children will get hit," said Ted Tull, administrative director for the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation. "If there's adult supervision, I think they would be safe."

Pinellas is ending traditional neighborhood zoning and moving to choice as part of a settlement of a 1964 court case that led to court-ordered busing and race ratios in schools. In a county where most black and white families live apart, the district hopes some parents will be attracted by special programs to choose campuses far from home to keep schools naturally integrated.

If that happens when the new system begins in fall 2003, more students will have to ride buses. (About 44,000 ride buses this year.) How much this expanded, more complex network of buses will cost depends on the choice plan's details, which the School Board will decide Oct. 24.

No matter how the plan is configured, officials estimate that the district will spend at least $6.2-million more annually, plus $6.2-million in mostly one-time capital costs, such as new buses.

Transportation officials say the hubs in Pinellas would be modeled after the examples they have seen around the nation, including the ones in Hillsborough. Pinellas might end up having more hubs, but they would be smaller than the ones in Hillsborough, where two hubs have nearly 80 buses and one has about 50.

Hillsborough has used three hubs to transport about 6,600 of the district's magnet students since the early 1990s.

Here's how it works: elementary, middle and high school students are picked up in their neighborhoods and ride up to an hour to one of three hubs. Each student is given a color-coded identification card, with the student's name and home address.

The buses pull into hubs, where at least three officials and one security guard are on hand. Once every bus is in place and the lot is locked, students are allowed to leave their neighborhood buses and board their buses to school.

All of the bus drivers stand outside while students are boarding. Once the sidewalks are empty, each driver checks in front, in back and underneath his bus. Then, like synchronized swimming, all of the bus drivers start their engines and file out.

It worked smoothly on Friday, six weeks into Hillsborough's school year. But it doesn't go so well the first few weeks of school.

As students and monitors adjust, the transfers can take 30 minutes or more. Students do get lost and wind up on the wrong buses. But Hillsborough officials say they expect confusion at the beginning of school, and that everyone winds up in the right place in the end.

Nancy Blackwelder, who oversees Pinellas' school bus routes, said she doubts that students of all ages would be mixed together, as in Hillsborough. That's because Pinellas' elementary, middle and high school starting times are staggered. If the board approves using hubs, at least small ones, she said the district will develop identification tags for students and colorful, easy-to-read markers for each bus.

The district also will have to figure out what to do if one bus is running late and holding up the transfer station.

Before hubs would be opened at the start of choice, Blackwelder said, the district would do a pilot with several magnet schools. That could happen in the next year, she said.

"It struck me that really all it was was much akin to a change of classes," Blackwelder said. "Every time the bell rings at a high school, 2,000 kids walk around and find their new class."

To prove that the chaos at hubs is controlled, Blackwelder last week showed School Board members a video of hubs she has seen around the nation. The videos seemed to show students, as in Hillsborough, moving randomly in all directions -- but it was all over in minutes with everyone in the right bus.

School Board member Nancy Bostock said the video made her feel a bit more comfortable about safety at hubs. Board member Lee Benjamin said the video scared him to death. Other board members seemed to share Benjamin's concerns.

School Board member Jane Gallucci said she spoke this week to board members and transportation officials in Hillsborough to calm her fears. But she was not swayed -- she still thinks hubs could be dangerous and disorganized. She also said the district should have told the public sooner about hubs, so board members could have gathered feedback.

"I think we should have been upfront with them and shared with them that this might be what happens," Gallucci said. "I guess I am just overwhelmed at this point."

In the days since the possibility of hubs was made public, Superintendent Howard Hinesley and board members say they have gotten only a few calls from concerned residents or district employees.

"It's efficient," Hinesley said. "It's been proven to be safe everywhere it's been done. We're not talking about having a huge -- from what they have told me -- hub with 80 buses."

On a small scale, Pinellas and Hernando counties have transfer stations already for some elementary-age children and high school students in vocational programs.

"The children are all very used to it," Blackwelder said. "Many times the trepidation is felt more by the parents than by the children."

- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

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