Warns of delays for 1st few days of school year
Justin Murphy
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle USA TODAY NETWORK
The Rochester City School District, again short on bus drivers to start the school year, is warning of possible delays in transportation for the first few days of the school year.
The situation is not as dire as it was in 2021, when the first day of school had to be delayed and thousands of students had no seat on a bus. Every student who was enrolled before mid-August is on a route for the first day of classes Wednesday, district spokeswoman Marisol Ramos-Lopez said On Labor Day, though, Superintendent Carmine Peluso warned parents of a “serious shortage of bus drivers” and said there likely would be delays in pickup and drop-off. He urged parents to let the district know if they’ll be driving their children, at least for the first week.
The district was unable to provide a figure for how many more drivers it and its contractors would like to hire.
The district is also placing more students on some buses. The formula it used in the past still reflected COVIDera social distancing regulations, Ramos- Lopez said, and often resulted in buses far below capacity.