Transportation- Shortages/Plans/Update
Dear Students, Families, and Staff, August 25, 2022
There is a shortage of substitutes and employees for many positions today. TSD is experiencing the same issues with our bus transportation. We currently do not have many substitute drivers and this is creating issues when bus drivers are sick.
We have prioritized our transportation (bus) needs. Our first priority is picking up and dropping off students to/from school. The second priority is transporting students to extra curricular activities. The last priority is transporting students to field trips.
Due to the nature of not knowing of illnesses until the last minute, we most likely will not be able to give much notice regarding transportation issues like this. We are asking families to have a Plan B ready. This plan should include how your child will or won't be transported to extra curricular activities such as sports. The plan should also include how you will transport your child to and/or from school if we do not have enough buses to transport students home. Again, there most likely won’t be much advance notice, and we apologize for this inconvenience, but it may not be possible to avoid this. Sometimes, we will need to postpone or cancel because there is not enough time to get notice to our parents for a Plan B transportation.
We also will be working with other teams/districts to schedule our activities at later times so that we can complete our pick up/drop off of students from school which is our first priority.
Families may work together to transport students to activities. Students will need permission from their parents/guardians to ride with another student/adult/family. Our staff need to be notified of any changes to transportation including if the student will not ride a bus.
Our goal is to provide transportation (busing). Other districts are in the same conundrum and are canceling field trips, extra curricular activities, and certain bus routes. We are working with Petermann to secure additional drivers, but are struggling to find people interested in driving our buses. It takes 3-5 weeks to train qualified bus candidates (including background check, drug testing, passing of written exam, and passing of driving exam). If you are interested in driving a bus (have a good driver record, pass background check, pass drug screening, and committed to passing the driver’s coursework), please contact Petermann at 513.273.3150.
My hope is to provide our families and students with enough time to develop a Plan B for transportation in the event some of the issues become more serious. I also hope that we will not have to cancel activities, routes, or field trips, but now we must become prepared in case we do not have enough drivers.
We are short substitutes in ALL areas.
In Education,
Dr. Edward Theroux
Talawanda Superintendent
