NAMPA, Idaho — Parents in Nampa are voicing frustrations at a school board meeting after the first week of school saw issues with transportation for students. The first round of route changes comes August 27.
- For questions about bus schedules or if buses are running late, you are encouraged to contact First Student at (208) 468-2800 or send an email to nampa_hotline@firstgroup.com.
- For information on routes and stops, contact Nampa School District Transportation at (208) 489-0588.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
August 20, the second day of school, saw parents show up to a Nampa School board meeting in droves to express their frustrations with the transportation situation after the school district switched bus companies with just six weeks before the first day.
Parents shared concerns over transfer buses for high schoolers, fewer bus stops and routes through neighborhoods, a walking distance to school of 1.5 miles, to lost children.
"...my son whose 8 years old. I waited for the bus. He was not on the bus. He was missing for an hour, my 8 year old son was missing for an hour. Gone. And he walked a mile," one parent told.
The District is preparing to implement new routes on Tuesday. Drivers will continue to be instrumental in developing and refining new routes.
"Just like a student and driver familiarity, it's also driver and route familiarity making sure that they have some practice time to get those done and just become incredibly familiar with it, so they know where they're going where those stops are as well," the District's Community and Media Relations Matt Sizemore told me.
I reached out to First Student to see how they're going to address parents' concerns from their end but they told me to direct my questions to the school district.
The first week saw high school students missing their transfer busses to get to their home high school to get their regular busses to go home. The District says that some of those transfer busses didn't show up at the expected time and some students either got their own ride or may have completely missed the bus. In response, the district is deploying more busses in order to also help with busses at or near capacity.
"So what we're doing is we're bringing out more buses to basically reorganize students and have some go in a different bus in order to kind of split them up in a way," Sizemore added.
