Pasco school officials ending bus routes for middle, high school students within two-mile radius of campus
Starting in the fall, thousands of students in Pasco County who currently take the bus will need to find another way to get to school.
The district said that they are not required to bus students who live within a two-mile radius of their schools, so taking those students out of the equation, will help address the current bus driver shortage that they continue to face. However, some parents still have their concerns.
The Pasco County School District told FOX 13 that in order to alleviate some of the challenges they’re facing due to ongoing shortage, they will do away with "unfunded bussing" beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.
That means students who live within a two-mile radius of their school will need to find their own transportation to classes.
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The district said that the state doesn’t provide funds for bussing kids within that radius based on the belief that if students live that close to their school, they can get there on their own.
Some parents do have concerns as to what this will mean for the safety of their students as the district does have 14 schools that start at 7:30 a.m. or earlier. That means that some students might have to walk at most two miles to school in the dark.
However, the district said they don’t have many other options. Earlier this year, they changed the start times at all of their schools to give bus drivers more time to get kids to school. While they said it has helped, it hasn’t done enough to fix the problem as they currently still have 53 bus driver vacancies.
While the district realizes this will affect a lot of students, they are confident the changes will help fix the current problems as it will help free up busses that will be used to backfill late bus runs.
The district said that if a student is directly affected by the changes, the family will specifically be notified.