Danica Suarez sat on the aisle floor of a crowded school bus during her first week of school, surrounded by rows of benches that overflowed with students headed to Silva Magnet High School in South Central El Paso.
“It was scary because I have a lot of ‘what ifs’ in my head,” the high school junior from Northeast El Paso told El Paso Matters. “What if the bus crashes? Will I go flying out?”
On other days, her bus route changed unexpectedly, she said, causing her to be late to school.
Since the start of the school year, families across the El Paso Independent School District have reported late buses, sudden route changes and drivers struggling to discipline students after the district updated its bus routes for the first time in 15 years. EPISD’s busing issues raised alarms among South Central residents after Noticias 26 Univision El Paso reported that a 3-year-old Douglas Elementary School student was left at the wrong bus stop after school on Aug. 6.
“Our family has had more issues with the bus system in the first six weeks of school this year than in the past two years combined,” said Barbara Guzman, a parent of a fourth-grader at Mesita Elementary School.
The district is considering equipping its school buses with GPS tracking systems and implementing an app that allows parents to monitor when their child has been picked up or dropped off at school. District officials briefly mentioned the program during a school board meeting last week when trustees heard an update on busing issues.
“We want to make sure that we are innovative in what we do. Technology is changing, and kids have more access to technology; parents have more. It’s also a way of protecting our children, to make sure we are being responsive to their needs,” said Joel Valencia, EPISD’s director of operations.
With the Zonar Z-Pass system, students will scan their IDs equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips every time they enter or exit a school bus, allowing the district to track students’ locations and ensure they get home safely. School buses will be equipped with screens that notify the driver if a student has gotten on the wrong bus. Parents will be able to track where their child is in real time using the Zonar My View App.
The district has also made efforts to address transportation concerns, including adding buses to campuses with high ridership and eliminating bus stops with no riders, Cathy Cisneros, EPISD’s director of transportation, said during a Sept. 16 board meeting.
“Some of the key issues identified was pick-up and drop-off time; they were delayed due to the route. We did make some route adjustments, parts were miscommunication and the times of the route, there was a lot of congestion,” Cisneros said.
EPISD’s new districtwide bus routes are separated into four transportation zones — West, Northeast, East Central and South Central, which it calls Zones of Excellence. Previously, students could only take the bus if they lived within a designated area near the campus they attend. Now, students can take the bus to any school within their zone.
EPISD’s transportation system overhaul coincides with an initiative, designed by former Superintendent Diana Sayavedra, to address declining enrollment by closing underutilized schools and improving the ones that remain open called Destination District Redesign.
Valencia said the district has seen an increase in bus ridership this year, but did not know by how much or how many students currently ride the bus. The district did not respond to requests for ridership data.
When EPISD presented its plans for the new transportation zones last year, administrators said they expected to increase the number of bus routes it offers from 74 to 116.
The district now has 148 bus routes, including 73 special education routes.
Bus driver vacancies lead to shortages
After the news that an EPISD student was left unattended at a school bus stop, Familias Unidas del Chamizal por la Educación held a protest Aug. 18 to demand answers and for the district to address what the group said is historic neglect of El Paso’s barrios.
Familias Unidas, a grassroots parental advocacy group based in the Chamizal neighborhood, has been critical of EPISD’s decision to divide the district into four transportation zones and to close schools in South Central El Paso.
Members of the group say there have been numerous bussing issues since the district eliminated several vacant bus driver and monitor positions.
“I feel that the school district isn’t treating this like a serious matter. They are trying to reduce costs at whatever level, and we don’t understand who is making sure that these changes don’t put vulnerable populations in danger or increase the educational gap,” Familias Unidas organizer Hilda Villegas told El Paso Matters.
EPISD communications director Liza Rodriguez said the positions were unneeded and cutting them did not affect the district’s ability to transport students safely.
“Every year we evaluate positions that are going to be cut because they’re no longer needed due to the demand,” Rodriguez told El Paso Matters. “After evaluating enrollment of students that sign up for bus services, we realize we don’t need those positions, because ridership has gone down a bit.”
The district didn’t provide numbers on how many students use its bus services.
While EPISD officials said there are enough drivers to cover all the routes in the district, there are occasionally shortages when a large number of bus drivers are absent, forcing mechanics, transportation supervisors and other employees with the proper license to leave their duties and drive the bus.
EPISD now has 160 bus drivers and 18 vacancies it plans to fill.
The district is also looking into expanding the number of buses that have monitors, which are employees who help ensure students who ride the bus are safe and follow the rules. Currently, monitors are only provided on buses with special education students.
EPISD has 76 school bus monitors and 28 vacancies.
Student tracking software
In recent years, school districts across the U.S. have begun implementing bus tracking software to ensure students get to class on time and get home safely.
Valencia said the district has been planning to implement the software since it began preparing for school closures and bus route changes over a year ago.
EPISD already uses Zonar bus tracking software to monitor its special education students, he said, adding that the system has shown positive results.
“As a parent, you want to make sure your kid gets on the bus. So I think it brings peace of mind to the parents and also to the campus,” he told El Paso Matters.
In May, the board approved a nearly $380,000 contract with Zonar to implement the system.
Nearly $13 million of the district’s $541.2 million budget goes toward student transportation.
EPISD plans to roll out the program throughout the district in phases, but does not have a timeline for when that will happen, Valencia said.
“We’re in the planning stages right now, because we have to make sure our software supports everything as we’re making upgrades,” he said.
The EPISD Board of Trustees will likely have to approve the contract with Zonar before the program could be implemented districtwide, Rodriguez said.
The district does not have an estimate of how much it will cost, she added.
Some parents said they like the idea of using an app to track their child’s bus and said it could be helpful, but raised concerns about security, the app’s accessibility and the cost of the program.
“It sounds great for special ed or for children, just for their safety. I’m just wary about the cost,” Danica’s mother, Erika Suarez, said.
Villegas said the district needs to do more to understand the issues that affect its underserved communities before adopting solutions that may not benefit all its families.
“It might work for other other areas, but it might not work for ours. We want the school district to really dig into the mess that they created, unravel it, and then we can do proposals. But because they’re trying to do a quick fix, that creates a lot of issues with a community like ours. What about the digital divide? There’s so many questions, they can’t just throw something out there without really assessing it,” Villegas said.
Diana Ramirez, an EPISD parent who helped form a coalition against closing schools, said the district should gather community input before implementing the program across all campuses.
“Generally, it seems like it would be a good thing, but we have to look at privacy concerns with custody battles and immigration status,” Ramirez said. “I would ask them to have focus groups first to see how that could benefit families or hurt them before anything is implemented.”
The post EPISD considers implementing school bus tracking software amid route overhaul appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More