‘Something has to be done;’ Parents worried about school bus reliability want answers

DAYTON — Dessa Jones said she is thankful her job is flexible about her comings and goings because this school year, the school bus her daughter rides has not been showing up in the morning.

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“I’m supposed to be here [she works at a tattoo shop in Dayton] around two o’clock,” Jones told News Center 7′s Brandon Lewis. “But sometimes I don’t even get in here [to her job] until four, depending on where I have to pick up which child, especially if I can’t figure out if she’s at her bus stop or if she’s at her school building.”

Jones said her daughter attends Kiser Elementary.

Jones said she and her daughter have had problems with district school bus service, three or four times a week, throughout the school year

“Now for an 11-year-old little girl to be sitting on the side of a corner, you know, dark six, seven o’clock in the morning, I think any parent would advocate for that not to be able to be happening,” Jones said.

She passed to News Center 7 a statement Interim Superintendent David Lawrence sent parents Thursday morning.

Lawrence, in the statement, said the driver of the route Jones’ daughter is scheduled to take had excellent attendance until the end of January. . . when she experienced a hardship that caused 11 route absences.

“No families have contacted the District about this bus’s problems,” Lawrence said in the statement, pointing out the district was “disheartened” that the families chose to go to News Center 7 to air their complaints.

“The use of the media to shed negative light on the matter is neither productive nor collaborative,” Lawrence said in the statement. “When a route is uncovered, students are still picked up and dropped off by either another bus or a District van as soon as one is available. Families are notified each time a route is uncovered through a text, email, and phone call. These notifications are available in 10 different languages.”

Alisha Slorp and her husband, who have two children attending Kiser also, said the district’s statement is not true.

Slorp showed this reporter the number of times she and her husband have called the district’s transportation department this month in an attempt to figure out what’s going on with the bus at pickup and drop off locations.

Both families said communication from the district could be better.

Slorp said she and her husband, “work. We have jobs. We got to go pick them up. We got to leave work to go pick them up or find different transportation, find ways to get them.”

This reporter called district offices Thursday afternoon and left a request seeking comment. This reporter also went to the district’s transportation hub as well as the district’s offices in downtown Dayton.

Nobody responded to this news organization’s attempts to interview district officials for comment.

A week ago, the district had parents and students interview candidates vying to become the district’s next superintendent. Transportation was among the topics addressed in the questioning.

“I want to retain bus drivers,” said Lawrence, one of the candidates for the full-time position. “We got about 130 of them. I don’t want to have to keep recruiting bus drivers.”

Jones and Slorp said what matters here is the children.

“I’m a worried mom every day, every day,” Jones said.

“We have to figure something out,” Slorp said. “Something has to be done.”

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