Charter schools preparing to roll out bus plans, but drivers are needed

PANAMA CITY — Charter schools have developed transportation plans to end bus route confusion, and for one local charter school organization, parents will play a primary role.
“Students in the morning for Bay Haven (Charter Academy) and North Bay Haven (Charter Academy) will have their parents transport them to the hub locations, then they’ll be transported directly to their school site,” said Tim Kitts, chief education officer at Bay Haven Charter Academy, Inc., parent organization of five local charter schools.
At a Bay District Schools press conference Tuesday, Kitts and Newpoint Bay High School and Academy director Carla Lovett revealed their schools’ respective transportation plans. Superintendent Bill Husfelt had prior demanded that charter schools design systems to integrate with the school district’s current bus routing system.
“We asked each charter school to look at several different options and come up with the best scenario that will work for them,” Husfelt said. “Oct. 20 is the date we’re going to implement all the changes.”
Students at the district’s 10 charter schools will be affected at varying levels, Husfelt said. Charter schools with “hundreds” of students likely will have more adjustments to make in order to accommodate large numbers of students scattered across the county.
In the mornings, parents will be responsible for getting Bay Haven and North Bay Haven students to designated locations, where students then will be shuttled to school by charter-school operated buses. In the afternoons, students will be transported from school to a traditional middle school campus, from where Bay District’s buses will take them home.
The new system will be implemented on Sept. 29, according to Kitts. And with the new bus system, the school is looking for bus drivers to drive the routes.
“The key to this is: the district does need drivers and Bay Haven needs drivers so we’re encouraging people to get in contact with us so that we can get you trained,” Kitts said.
Friday is the deadline to apply.
While changing school start times could have aided the district with transporting charter school students, Kitts said students would lose as much as 48 minutes of instructional time.
However, Newpoint administration opted to change start times as the “obviously simplest” way to deal with the transportation problem. School will start at 8:30 a.m. instead of the original 8:15 a.m. School still will end at 3 p.m.
“We are fortunate, in one way, that we did have 15 minutes set aside for homeroom and a project period,” Lovett said. “The only way we were able to do this was to take that time away.”
Instead of being transported to one of the school district’s 20 elementary schools, the charter school’s roughly 100 shuttled students will be taken from bus stops to one of five of the district’s high schools and to school.
“It’s the best option for us, obviously, because it’s the simplest thing to do,” Lovett added. And “we did not lose any instructional time in core courses.”
Newpoint’s system will go into effect Monday.
Officials said parents with questions should contact their child’s charter school for more information about new routes and transportation systems.