PANAMA CITY — Bay County parents may have noticed a few bumps in the school district’s transportation system in recent weeks, including recurrent delays in getting students home in the afternoons.
“The transportation department still has some wrinkles to iron out,” said John Haley, executive director of operational support services.
Haley said the district is scrambling to cover bus routes amid a critical shortage of regular and substitute bus drivers. “You have to piece together routes, and that causes a delay,” he said.
According to grandmother Billie McWain, delays have not been the only issue.
She said when her 6-year-old granddaughter, Brieanna Hill, decided not to board the school bus Oct. 7 when school let out at 2:30, it caused a major panic.
“In this particular incident, the child told the teacher she was a walker,” said Patti Fowler, principal at Oscar Patterson Elementary School.
McWain said when Brieanna didn’t get off the bus at 2:50 with the other children, she began calling the school and her daughter, Shanda Hill, to leave work so the two could drive a grid in separate vehicles looking for Brieanna.
Brieanna said in an interview she thought her mother told her she could walk home that day, but she was wrong. In fact, the first-grader was never a walker.
Brieanna, who lives almost 2 miles from the school, walked off the campus and made it three-quarters of a mile to the post office on Sherman Avenue before two ladies stopped the little girl to ask her why she was walking alone.
The ladies then flagged down a random passing school bus, and the driver radioed for permission to return Brieanna to her school.
“Somebody could have taken her,” McWain said. “I was terrified.”
Fowler said she apologized profusely to McWain about the incident and had spoken with the teacher about not following the school’s policy to confirm changes in transportation.
“The teacher failed to confirm the method of how the child was going to get home,” Fowler said. “This was a human error.”
While Brieanna was returned safely, McWain and Hill said what happened that day and three other incidents this year of Brieanna boarding the wrong bus or missing it altogether is unacceptable.
“I just want the school to be more vigilant about the kids, especially with the kindergarteners and first-graders,” Hill said.
Fowler stressed this sort of thing is not a usual occurrence, and her goal is that each child is safe.
Haley said he hopes to take some of the human error out of the district’s transportation system.
Students leaving Oscar Patterson Elementary in the afternoon board one of two buses, dubbed the red bus or blue bus. Brieanna showed The News Herald the blue pass she wears on her backpack.
Z Pass
Haley said one goal for transportation is to replace the color-coded bus passes with the “Z Pass.” It’s a tracking system that scans a student’s RFID card — using technology like the rice-sized tracker implanted in a pet — and is carried by the student boarding or exiting the bus, transmitting real-time data that parents and administrators can view online.
Haley said three elementary schools in the district already have Z Pass, and it’s a priority to get it on board for all elementary schools.
The Z Pass initiative is one of many changes the district will implement once the new transportation director, Anthony Conte Jr., starts next week.
“He comes with a lot of fresh ideas,” Haley said of Conte.
Haley said the district will refocus on communications and employing the Versatrans system, a bus routing and planning software used to improve transportation efficiency.
Haley said he’d like to hire 12 substitute bus drivers. The starting pay for sub drivers is $12.04 per hour, and these jobs could evolve into full-time positions.
Haley hopes the arrival of a new director, adding a dozen new drivers and implementing sophisticated student and bus tracking measures will help things run more smoothly and safely for over 13,000 students the district transports on a daily basis.
“When you have that number of kids and the number of conceivable times something could go wrong, we’re doing pretty good,” he said.