DAYTON — It’s been close to a month and nearly a dozen Dayton area charter schools are complaining about bus services they claim Dayton Public Schools is not providing.
One principal said she is reaching out to the Ohio Department of Education because her complaints to DPS are not leading to improvements.
The 400 students in elementary and middle school at the Dayton Horizon Science Academy can’t come through the door and then get into their seats because of busing issues, which means they cant learn anything.
>> RELATED: Dayton Public Schools buses are late, leave students waiting, charter school principal says
“We have four busses that service our school and they are not coming consistently at all” said Alyse Pennington, principal of Horizon Science Academy North. “For example, on Friday we hade one bus of four show up to transport our students. This morning we had two busses show up to transport our students.”
Alyse Pennington is the principal of Horizon science academy north elementary.
She said DPS provided busing has been a nightmare this year since the day her school started on August 10, until now.
Pennington said that means her staff had to call parents to tell them they would not have bus transportation.
It’s the same things she did Friday, taking pictures of one bus picking kids up after school, instead of four.
That led to lines she videotaped of parents, relatives and friends trying to help each other get the students here home safely.
>> Some Dayton Public Schools bus service issues with charter school are resolved, principal says
“We are on week five, we’ve been in school more than a month, this is not the beginning of school hiccups to get the transportation fixed,” Pennington said.
Pennington has not been quiet about the issues.
She went to a Dayton Public School board meeting to express concerns and repeatedly called DPS transportation managers.
“It seems like we solve one issue and more and more keep coming up,” Pennington said.
Pennington said her last 10 years with the school have not seen any problems like this.
News Center 7 reached out to Dayton Public Schools to ask about the latest issues. They have not responded yet, but a couple weeks ago they said: “At this time, the district has added routes to address transportation concerns. Routes are also being adjusted based on changes in enrollment and actual ridership. These changes will continue to take place over the next few weeks.”
Pennington said she and administrators from 10 other Dayton area charter schools filed complaints with the Ohio Department of Education for being non-compliant with their transportation needs.
“It is legally required, they do receive the funding to transport all students to community schools,” Pennington said.
The school says so many parents have expressed frustration in who they can complain to that they’ve actually put forms out to send complaints to the Ohio Department of Education about the bussing issues and why it isn’t being provided like it should be.