Bus assigners get blame for overcrowded school stops

Bus routers with "tunnel vision" and a massive wave of students new to "arterial" bus routes appear to be among the reasons why chaos reigned at some Pinellas bus stops this year, a top district official said this week.

District employees setting up bus schedules for individual schools may not have known they were collectively clumping scores of students at the same arterial bus stops, which are located on major roads, associate superintendent Michael Bessette told the Pinellas County School Board.

Meanwhile, the routing system apparently does not include a tripwire that sounds an alarm when a prospective bus stop gets too packed, he said.

"Do we not have something in the system that flags this? That's something that I don't totally have the answers to because we're not finished" with a review of what went wrong, Bessette said. But "if we don't have something like that in the system, we need to make sure we do."

Some parents did not respond kindly.

"Doesn't that just strike you as stupid?" said Dawn Hulbert, whose daughter Morgan, a student at Osceola Fundamental High School, was catching the bus at a heavily criticized stop at Fifth Avenue N and 66th Street. "I can't believe they have people planning routes and not talking to each other."

During the first week of school, thousands of parents complained about crowded bus stops at busy intersections and no guidance about which corner their kids should wait on. At some stops, parents watched packs of high school kids strain in the dark to see if an arriving bus was theirs — and then cross multiple lanes of traffic to board.

Bessette said a report with recommendations for a fix could be in superintendent Julie Janssen's hands by the end of next week. In the meantime, he offered a preliminary assessment to board members.

A big part of the problem, he said, was a huge increase in the number of students using arterial bus stops. Those stops serve students who attend schools outside of their zones.

Last year, 3,500 students in high school alone used those stops. But this year, as the district continued its return to neighborhood schools, the district allowed high school students to remain in their existing schools on condition that they find their own transportation or use arterial busing. The number using arterial stops swelled to 12,000.

The result — a lot more kids at each stop — was aggravated because each of the district's seven routers did not know how many students other routers were putting at the same stop, Bessette said.

The stop at 49th Street and 70th Avenue, for example, serves 10 high schools. Eight have one to three students at that stop. One has six. One has 27.

"Any individual router is looking at that going, 'Three kids. That's perfect,' " Bessette said. "They don't necessarily see its impact on the big picture."

He said the district also needed to be more specific about which corners students should wait on — and will do that in the future. He said it may not have been critical enough in assessing whether proposed stops were safe enough or had enough parking for parents.

"No excuse is acceptable at this point," he told the board.

Of 130 arterial stops, up to 15 had major issues, Bessette said. The district responded by moving some of them and/or splitting one stop into two or three.

At this point, Bessette said, all outstanding complaints have been addressed. But district officials are still in the process of reviewing every stop.

"They're definitely moving in the right direction," said board member Carol Cook. "There are some processes that have to be fine-tuned and tightened up."

Many parents say district changes eventually made the problem stops better.

"It's safer. That part I'm happy about," said Candy White, whose daughter, a Gibbs High student, was assigned the stop at Fifth and 66th. Her stop was moved a block away and off the main roads.

But dwindling complaints don't mean the issue is going away.

"Somebody messed up," said board member Janet Clark. "I'm tired of hearing about accountability for teachers and principals" but not for district administrators.

Clark asked when transportation officials realized they were dealing with a flood of new students on arterial routes — and, if they had enough notice, why they didn't react accordingly.

Bessette's response: "Excellent question."

"I don't have the answer. It's one I'm trying to get," he said. "I would think it should have been anticipated.

But me saying it should have been doesn't mean it happened."

Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8873.