ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Public School parents and their kids are still struggling to deal with the uncertainty of bus pickups.
Melissa Slonski and her 13-year-old daughter, Adrianna, say it’s tough for families.
“There’s major interruptions with the school buses, cause my daughter hasn’t had a school bus since we got back from spring break. Every day, I get a text message saying there’s 15, 12 buses not in services,” Melissa said. “I have contacted the school district, I’ve emailed them, the only thing I’ve gotten back is, ‘What’s her name and her bus stop?’ That’s it. No solution of any sort. I’ve been contacting the St. Louis Public School District since the beginning of this year and some of last year about the situation that’s going on with their buses.”
Her daughter says it’s frustrating to hope you can get to school.
“I may not go because I don’t have a bus and sometimes we’ll call and maybe they don’t send transportation or maybe they’ll send a rescue bus, but that will take like 30 minutes so I’m already late for school,” Adrianna said.
She says it’s not safe to stand at the bus stop for too long.
“The fact of waiting and I’ve been hollered at by an old man driving past before. It’s gotten me uncomfortable because I’m not trying to get hollered at by an old man,” Adrianna said. “It makes me feel like I’m not important, because every time we start to complain, like, ‘Hey, there’s no bus going on, maybe you can send somebody?’ But they don’t really care. It seems like they don’t care because this has been happening since like December, and they still haven’t done anything about it.”
The school district contends that it’s doing all that it can. They had a $22 million contract with the first bus company—First Student—but that didn’t work out because students weren’t picked up as they should have.
Then the school district contracted with Missouri Central Bus Company for $26 million but the situation got no better, leaving mothers like Melissa frustrated.
FOX 2 contacted the St. Louis Public School District for comment. The district’s communications director forwarded a letter it sent to parents:
“It makes us feel like our kids don’t even matter because they’re not even trying to get them to school, like they don’t care,” Melissa said.
The school district has parted ways with Missouri Central Bus Company and is looking for a new bus carrier to transport thousands of students to and from school every day. District officials say they do care, but reiterate that this is part of a larger nationwide bus driver shortage, and they’re uncertain when the crisis will end.
