There’s less school buses running in Bruce and Grey counties this year due to a driver shortage.
Student Transportation Service Consortium of Grey Bruce Manager of Purchasing and Transportation Brian Hayman confirms there are 17 less bus routes being utilized across Bruce and Grey counties.
Some parents in the Shallow Lake area have concerns about the reduction in service. One of them agreed to talk to Bayshore Broadcasting News about this.
Jessica Galea lives near Sideroad 15 just outside of Shallow Lake. Her kids entering Grades 3 and 7 attend Hepworth Central Public School. She says they’ve always been picked-up and dropped-off from the end of their driveway.
But that’s not happening this year.
Now, she says her and other parents in a similar situation with kids who are considered out-of-zone but attend Hepworth Central School need to get to a central location in Shallow Lake to be bused there.
Galea says this isn’t an easy shift for her household to manage. She and her husband both work and rely on the bus pickup and dropoff to ensure their kids are able to get to and from school safely.
She has concerns as her kids would now have to walk about 30 minutes along Highway 6 into Shallow Lake to catch the bus to Hepworth School.
“If parents could get their kids and drive them to the bus than we would just drive them to school,” Galea says. “We pay taxes and go to work, and try to be upstanding citizens of the community and help out at the schools when we can. In return, all we want is to ensure our kids can get to school and home from school safely.”
Students registered at public and catholic schools in Bruce and Grey counties are assigned a home school based on several factors, such as their address and programming choices.
Hayman says the driver shortage that led to a reduction in bus routes in Grey Bruce has put additional pressure on current infrastructure, and one strategy being taken to minimize ride times is to review out-of-bounds bus stops.
He says while stop locations have been moved, the consortium has “worked very hard to still offer transportation on an existing route that was as close to the required transportation location as possible.” But they do make sure they don’t deviate from planned routes to pick up out-of-bounds students.
“If a bus route is travelling past the out-of-bounds requested transportation address to pick up an eligible student we will provide a stop,” Hayman explains. “If the route does not need to travel past the out-of-bounds requested transportation address then we have assigned a bus stop at the closest point on the route that will allow the student to be transported to the out-of-bounds school. This enables us to reduce the ride times of eligible students.”
Galea says it is the student zoning that is part of the problem in her case. Hepworth Central Public School is the closest Bluewater District School Board elementary school to them the provides French immersion programming. But her kids are actually zoned for East Ridge Community School in Owen Sound — even though it’s much further away.
A spokesperson for the Bluewater District School Board acknowledges it is possible and conceivable a student’s address could fall just outside a boundary, which would assign them to a school that is further away than one within the nearby zone.
