Streetsboro School District Aims to Fix Transportation and Staffing Challenges
Credit: Cameron Miller
The Streetsboro School Board met on Thursday, Dec. 9th 2021 as part of their traditional monthly meetings. The main topic discussed was the issue of transportation, specifically busses and bus routes. Amanda Hall, Streetsboro’s Transportation Supervisor, led most of the conversation throughout the night. She started off with a presentation designed to give information to those that might be interested in obtaining their CDL required to drive a school bus. She says the reason that this presentation was necessary is due to the district only having 15 drivers. Andreas Johansson is the Director of Operations at the district the number of drivers currently on staff is much lower than usual.
Credit: scrrockets.org
“So typically we plan for 22 routes, so that would mean 22 drivers. With that number of routes we would like to have two flex drivers. Which are drivers that are full time employed, but they can then drive routes and cover for absences, or sick, or personal days, or whatever it might be. So 24 is an ideal number.”
To make up for the lack of bus drivers on staff, Hall had a second presentation going over the improved routing that will go into effect on the week of Jan. 3rd, 2022. Johansson believes the new plan will be more efficient since it is geographically based and will allow for two contracted flex drivers to help when needed.
Cynthia Deevers, Superintendent Pro Tempore for Streetsboro City Schools, gave some insight to the staffing challenges outside of just transportation. She cited Covid as the main contributor to these absences, in addition to the usual factors such as, maternity and surgery. The previous 3 months totaled over 2,000 total absences, with December already over 400 absences.
Data: Streetsboro School Board
Graph by Cameron Miller
To fill in these absences Deevers says the district is utilizing the latest ARP (Pandemic Relief) Grant to hire full-time substitutes. Not only that, but teachers in the district are covering classes for their colleagues daily. Deevers also says that student learning continues to be the primary goal and has kept remote learning to a minimum as a result.
For more information you can visit: https://www.scsrockets.org/boe-regular-board-of-education-meeting-december-9th-2021/ to watch the entire meeting.
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