More school bus cuts coming: How Durham parents can weigh in amid driver shortage
Twins Blythe and Celeste, both 5 and in matching starry puffer coats, paused on the sidewalk along their route home from Lakewood Elementary School.
The girls were approaching an apartment complex driveway, hidden from cars by a white picket fence taller than them.
“We want you to think of a driveway just like a road,” instructed Jacopo Montobbio, who coordinates education efforts for Bike Durham.
That means stop and watch for cars before crossing, even if you’re safely on the sidewalk.
The twins were among several dozen children and parents who gathered at Lakewood Elementary to get safety tips on Saturday, culminating in what Blythe called a nice “walky walk” through the surrounding neighborhoods.
“Look both ways and stay on the left side of the street,” Blythe dutifully repeated when asked what she learned.
Parents will find out Thursday night if Lakewood is one of the 21 elementary schools affected by the district’s plan to stop sending buses for students living within a mile of school. in 2025.
The new “family responsibility zones” — also called walk zones — are designed to help with an emergency shortage of bus drivers, which school board members worry is driving up absences.
Over 1,000 students will be affected, transportation staff report, saving 20 school bus runs.
Safe routes to schools ‘even more important’
Durham needs 65 to 100 more full-time drivers to staff the over 800 routes driven each day, according to the school district, and some students are having their bus routes repeatedly canceled because of the driver shortage.
After Thanksgiving, bus service was scaled back to four days a week, a strategy meant to help avoid last-minute cancellations that result in students missing school. That’s been extended once already, to Jan. 17.
Blythe and Celeste get driven to school for now. They like that.
“They probably could to it themselves, but people just don’t pay attention. People run the stop sign in front of our house routinely,” the kindergartners’ dad, Michael Dougherty, said.
Making it safer to walk and bike to neighborhood schools is a years-long effort that’s become “even more important with the bus driver shortage” affecting the Durham Public Schools district, said Safe Routes to Schools operations coordinator Michelle Pendergrass.
Families at Lakewood on Saturday got free bike lessons, helmets, tune-ups and food. Some students showed off, leaning back and pedaling with no hands. Others were more cautious, some taking their first rides without training wheels.
“Uno, dos, tres. Levanta los pies,” Desiree Squire, one of Bike Durham’s lead educators, repeated in sing-song to a Spanish-speaking kindergartner, demonstrating alongside her on the pavement. (In English, that’s “One, two, three. Put your feet up.”)
Bike Durham also contracts with the school district to give lessons during gym classes.
“Safety is important, so we teach them hand signals, how to stop, how to look around and be aware of their surroundings,” Squire said.
Want to learn more?
The details of family responsibility zones will be worked out in a Thursday night meeting. Public comment will be allowed.
- When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 19
- Where: District headquarters downtown, 511 Cleveland St.
They’ll also discuss express stops for three magnet schools that draw students from all areas of the county:
- Durham School of the Arts
- Rogers-Herr Middle Schools
- School for Creative Studies
That would require about 1,000 middle and high school students to commute to group pick-ups and drop-offs at a school near them, instead of a bus stopping in their neighborhood.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 12:46 PM.
