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ATHABASCA — Aspen View Public Schools (AVPS) has been in a balancing act between the number of students attending brick and mortar schools and the number of bus drivers available to get them there, since the start of the school year.
Director of transportation Rhonda Alix presented trustees with a report at their Dec. 17 meeting noting less than two per cent of all students do not have access to busing due to a shortage of drivers. There are some finishing off their certification — seven drivers have completed the full Mandatory Entry-Level Training (MELT) Class 2-S – referred to as MELT 2-S — since September and two more, one each in Athabasca and Smoky Lake, are awaiting their road test.
“This year has been a challenging year for bus drivers with all the new COVID-19 protocol changes. Their normal day-to-day routines have changed considerably from cleaning of the buses after each route, multiple route changes, student tracking, seating plan, COVID-19 tracing, not sharing goodies at Halloween with the students,” Alix said. “Our Aspen View bus drivers have been fantastic.”
There are now three amalgamated routes, she told trustees — a high school bus for Boyle and two routes in Athabasca, adding a route in Smith was cancelled between Sept. 2 and Nov. 2 and is now being handled by a spare bus driver.
“We currently have 61 bus routes running so, in total, as of last Friday (Dec. 11), that would be 7808 routes,” she said. “Amalgamated routes is 384 – we've had a.m. and p.m. bus routes – which is just a little less than five per cent of the 7808 bus routes in total, but all of those students still got to school.”
Thirty-two morning and afternoon bus routes were cancelled because there were no students on that route, either because there were no longer students living along the way, or because the students were all in Grades 7 to 12, which started continuity of education at home Nov. 30. Another 14 were cancelled while H.A Kostash School in Smoky Lake was being cleaned. There were 180 cancelled routes in all — 2.31 per cent of the total.
“Driver shortage cancelled routes is 134 a.m. and p.m. routes,” said Alix. “So, this is less than two per cent of the total routes. This is where students didn't have a bus to get to school. That's a pretty good number considering the way that we had started the year off. So, Athabasca had three a.m. and p.m. routes cancelled, Boyle had 22 a.m. and p.m. routes cancelled, Grassland had 24 and Smith had 85 a.m. and p.m. routes cancelled.”
Chair Candy Nikipelo asked if drivers were found, would the amalgamated routes be split or if they remained the status quo for the remainder of the school year.
“Yes, for this year, if we do find more drivers and we can fulfil more routes, we will fill the two routes in Athabasca,” Alix said. “The one route in Boyle, the high school bus, that route right now currently doesn't have enough high school students in the Grassland attendance boundary attending high school in Boyle to warrant that one route.”
Supt. Neil O’Shea said many factors play a role in deciding which routes can or cannot be amalgamated and hopefully a survey of where students will be returning to after the Christmas break will give the division a better idea if routes need to be added, removed or combined.
“One of the factors that we need to look at is how many of our students are staying online, how many are coming back to school, how many more want to join online,” he said. “So once again, toward the end of January, Rhonda will be, once we find out the survey results of our parents and what they're planning on doing, back at the drawing board with bus routes and whatnot. But in terms of amalgamated routes, I think the question was, would we continue to try and fill them and we would, because we want to honour our agreements with the contractors.”
O’Shea added the drivers have been keeping meticulous records in accordance with COVID-19 protocols and are able to provide the information to Alix in a short period of time if someone tests positive.
“Our drivers are really stepping up to the plate, they've got accurate records, they've got great seating plans, they're enforcing them and it's been really, really positive,” he said.
