No transportation woes for students in Howard County

There's a buzz in the air for both students and staff as they return to school from summer break.

Christiana Mokosso's daughter is entering the 9th grade at Wilde Lake High.

She says she's ready to enter high school.

"Today, she is excited. She's been up since like six in the morning getting ready for school. So, I've been praying to her and all the kids coming to school. It's a fresh year," said Mokosso.

But the big thing on everyone's mind is whether or not school buses would show up on time.

Around 7:30 in the morning, things ran smoothly at Wilde Lake as the buses came to drop off students.

But that was a different story last year with several buses either showing up very or not at all throughout Howard County.

The transportation fiasco impacted nearly 2400 students. But district officials are confident things are going to go smoother this year.

"I've been getting reports from transportation since 6:00 am and we see buses rolling off the lots. I have to really commend our contractors and all of our local contractors who have worked to turn this story around," said Bill Barnes, the superintendent of Howard County Schools.

Barnes says this year they have a surplus of over 100 drivers.

So, he believes in the event that something goes wrong, they will have the staffing to cover it.

"There will always be driver callouts. It's a big fleet of over 500 buses, so we stand ready with standby buses and with a communication system to let parents know what bus is going to show up at their lot," Barnes said.

For Christiana, her kids don't ride the school bus, but she feels for parents who do drop off their kids.

"When students are stuck and can not go to school, that puts the parents down because if you have to go work early and you are out there catching their bus to go to school and then you get that phone call that kids are not in school because there is no bus, everybody is panicking," Mokosso said.

Superintendent Barnes says the first day of school is a special one because this is his first first one with Howard County Public Schools.