Montgomery County bus driver shortage causing major delays for students
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (FOX 5 DC) - Montgomery County Public Schools issued an alert to parents Wednesday morning due to a higher-than-expected number of bus drivers calling out of work.
MCPS announced that it would not be able to pick up students along 90 of its 1,228 bus routes, leaving parents scrambling to find last-minute means of transportation.
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Families are being encouraged to organize carpools or to walk in groups, if possible.
"We apologize for this inconvenience and understand the difficulty this causes for families," MCPS stated in the alert. "Given these circumstances today we are working to better understand the problem and will provide further communication to let families know how we will solve this issue."
MCPS sent out this update to parents and students Wednesday night:
There were major staff shortages that impacted our ability to transport all students to and from school. Specifically, 75 out of 1228 bus routes and 82 out of 1228 routes were impacted this morning and this evening, respectively.
While we continue to work to respond to these challenges, we expect to experience similar situations with previous staffing shortages, and COVID-related absences. We will take the following actions to address the transportation-related staffing challenges:
- Communicate specific routes and affected schools posting relevant updates on this page.
- Prioritize routes that serve students with special needs.
- Continue to use available staff to drive multiple routes serving one school.
- Continue to use available transportation support staff and supervisors to cover routes.
Additionally, we are exploring numerous recruiting options and a variety of other strategies to meet both short-and long-term staffing shortages in the Department of Transportation.
Read the full update here.
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A MCPS watchdog group, called the Parents Coalition, mapped out the bus routes impacted – noting clusters like BCC, Churchill, Northwest and Clarksburg were hit a little harder than others, but the impact is county-wide.
In an email to FOX 5, the MCPS spokesperson said, "COVID-19 case reports from staff were being monitored and planned for, but this morning there were more call-outs than could be managed and these were unexpected. If they are COVID-19 positive cases, then staff were not reporting them via the communicated process."
The spokesperson went on to clarify that MCPS is not blaming the individual bus drivers – although a couple hundred out of nearly 300 drivers called out sick.
Parents who do not know their child’s bus route number can visit this website. The MCPS bus routes without drivers are listed below:
Route # 1111 1116 1122 1125 1126 1127 1204 1208 1214 1216 1220 1226 1302 1304 1305 1312 1319 1414 2102 2109 2119 2310 2310 2318 2402 2406 2410 2411 2413 2418 2602 2604 2606 2611 2618 2628 3101 3107 3116 3206 3210 3216 3302 3315 3319 3335 3420 3506 3511 3801 3805 3806 3808 3820 3821 3824 3826 3829 3832 3833 3836 3859 3863 3864 3870 4103 4119 4123 4133 4135 4306 4307 4313 4315 4847 6109 6112 6221 6308 6310 6315 6318 6319 6331 6811 6812 6836 6880 6896 6913 6975 6981 6991 6992