Mom who lives 3 minutes from school says her daughter's bus ride is an hour long

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The new school year has exposed a not-so-new problem: having enough qualified bus drivers to get students to and from school.

The ongoing bus driver shortage across the region has forced some school districts to get creative with schedules and routes.

One mother whose children go to the North Allegheny School District reached out to KDKA with concerns over how her children are getting to school and how long it's taking.

The mom, who asked that we not reveal her identity, explained that it now takes her elementary school student about an hour to get to and from school.  She said her family only lives about 3 minutes from the school her daughter goes to and that in the past, the commute was about 30 minutes.

While the drive time for her older child is just as long, she said she is even more concerned about the process to get her to North Allegheny Intermediate School.

"She has to get off one bus and get on to another bus and at that point, they just put kids on random buses to get them to the North Allegheny Intermediate School."  She explained that the first bus takes her to the high school where other buses are waiting to then take students to NAIS.

"Then she does the same thing in the afternoon," she said.  "She gets on the bus, they drive her to the high school, then she gets off that bus and gets onto another bus and then makes it home."

She said to make sure students don't miss their bus, North Allegheny dismisses some students about 10 minutes early.

Director of Operations Mark Trichtinger told KDKA-TV in a statement that, "North Allegheny Intermediate and Senior High School have historically dismissed from their 9th-period class a few minutes early at the start of the school year while students acclimated to dismissal procedures. As of today, all students will be dismissed at their normal times and will not miss any scheduled instructional time."

In the same statement, Trichtinger added that the district is working to optimize routes, coordinate schedules and ensure that our students are picked up and dropped off in the most efficient manner possible.

Those efforts to optimize efficiency are being seen all over the region. 

Todd O'Shell, vice president of operations at ABC Transit, said most of the districts the school bus company works with have some deficiency in drivers.

Although ABC Transit does not have a contract with North Allegheny, they are constantly working to put drivers in buses for around a dozen other area schools.

"It's very frustrating for us because we want to provide the most outstanding service possible to get students to and from school," O'Shell said.  "We struggle not being able to do that and we really want to be able to do that on a daily basis and not have any service interrupted. Unfortunately, it's just circumstantial and out of our control."

Such is the case at the North Hills School District, which does have a contract with ABC Transit.

The district shared an email letting their families know that, until further notice, at least three bus routes would be impacted by the ongoing driver shortage.

"It breaks our heart, and I lose sleep at night when we can't do something that we want and need to do for the district and get the kids educated and to their events," O'Shell said.

Through email correspondence, the North Allegheny School District confirmed that they are staffed with bus drivers and work with 15 third-party contractors to transport 1,000 students to more than 30 public, private and parochial schools each day.

However, parents, including the one who first reached out to KDKA, said they would like for those accommodations to be better communicated.

"I want to know where she's at, what bus she's on, that type of thing," the North Allegheny parent said.  "It's the transfer that's the issue because if there was an accident or something, there would be no way to know if she was on the bus that had an accident."

North Allegheny does have plans to roll out an app to help ease transportation and location concerns.

Brandi Smith, communications specialist for the district, said the Traversa Ride 360 mobile app for parents/guardians will provide secure access to student routing information, as well as the current bus location and planned bus paths.

She said it'll provide quick access to students' routing information, which can include the bus stop, route, driver and bus number.

Parents and guardians will be notified once it's available.

As far as the overall bus driver shortage, both North Allegheny and ABC Transit said they are always taking applications and recruiting new drivers.