Some Dayton Public Schools bus service issues with charter school are resolved, principal says

DAYTON — Complaints about the Dayton Public Schools bus service involving late arrivals and pickups have been mostly resolved, parents and administrators at Horizon Science Academy, a charter school in Dayton, said Wednesday, but now more issues are cropping up.

>> RELATED: Dayton Public Schools buses are late, leave students waiting, charter school principal says

Concerns about what time buses deliver students to the school and how long students have to wait to be taken home have been aired since the 2022-23 school year began three weeks ago.

“Yesterday we find out that they changed the bus but didn’t notify the parents or the schools,” Horizon Principal Alyse Pennington told News Center 7′s Mike Campbell.

Pennington said she had a student reported missing Tuesday when they put her on the same bus home as the one she was on that delivered her to school that morning, only to learn Dayton Public Schools had changed routes and not told anyone.

She did acknowledge that DPS has solved the issue of constantly late arriving buses, by taking her school off a so-called DPS tiered schedule for bus route arrival and departure times.

“Which means buses are not arriving on time to school and in the afternoon to take our students home,” Pennington said.

She just wants to know why the district would put her school in a tier that would be an hour off the bell schedule.

Pennington said she isn’t sure all charter schools have buses arriving on time but her busing problems now focus on parents having children picked up at different bus stops, bus routes being changed without notification and members of the same family, headed for the same school, not being allowed on the same bus.

“We have parents doing their best to get their students back and forth to school, we have tried to do carpooling, things like that, but it’s honestly a struggle to get students to school,” she said.

DPS, when asked to respond to this latest round of concerns, released the following statement: “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. These changes have not impacted the tiered scheduling.”

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