Summit discusses options, city busses after KCPS transportation issues

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Leaders convened for a summit Thursday evening addressing a growing problem for Kansas City Public Schools and charter schools- getting the kids to school on the bus.

One of the three breakout sessions during the Be Part of the Transportation Solution Summit showed parents and high schoolers how they could take city buses as an additional option. Of course, there are questions about safety.

“As long as at home there’s those proper conversations with the parents, there’s consensus around what safety measures are in place, how to properly navigate the city’s terrain our students will be prepared.” Jordan Gordon, Kansas City Public Schools Chief Operating Officer, said.

KCPS and charter students first outlined the problems they face getting to school.

“Sometimes I’d be waiting for the bus and I would be late to school and I don’t have a homeroom so I would just immediately be missing my first class,” Alice, a sophomore at Academie Lafayette said.

“It’s a horrible issue. It’s not 5-10 minutes late, it’s not once or twice a week, it’s a consistent challenge getting kids to school,” Spark Bookhart, Parent Power Lab Founder, said.

Parents say last year they came to expect the dreaded news.

“Every day I’ll get a text, your bus is not running, your bus is late, your bus has no driver,” Leslie Kohlmeyer, Executive Director, Show Me KC Schools, said.

Kansas City Public School officials say last year they faced a shortage of 25 to 30 drivers. Despite spending 32 million dollars a year in the city on school bussing, according to the Missouri Charter School Association, roughly 5 percent of students per day never made it to school because of transportation issues.

“At the end of the day, we have a responsibility to educate the kids of our community while different students experience a different level of disruption of transportation. Any one student having to make a choice of having to attend school as a result of a bus driver or a bus not showing up is completely unacceptable,” Gordon said.

KCPS says this year they’ve chosen a new bus company, Zum, with air-conditioned buses and technology to keep parents up to date.

“They’ll have real-time access to where that bus is, how far is it from their drop stop when the bus is perhaps running a bit behind,” said Gordon.

But the founder of the organization that’s been collecting student and parent experiences the past year says he’s happy the summit was still held to try to get to the root of the problem.

“I think if bus vendors were to going to be able to solve this problem I think it would have been solved a long time ago,” Bookhart said.

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