AUSTIN, Texas — Leander ISD parents are fed up with bus problems they've been having since the school year started almost two weeks ago. They said there's been late bus pick-ups, late drop-offs, and even drop-offs in wrong locations.
“I know that there’s always hiccups when you start off a year," said Uryan Nelson, an LISD parent. "There have been in the past, but there seems to be quite a bit more hiccups, if you will.”
Nelson has been a part of the Leander school district for seven years and he thinks it's a great school district. He's just concerned the bus problems won't be fixed.
“You leave your kids at a bus stop expecting them to be picked up in a couple of minutes, you go to work and you receive a phone call 45 minutes later from your son or daughter that they haven’t been picked up yet,” said Nelson. “As a parent, we put our trust in LISD to keep our kids safe and to get them to and from school on time and to be where they’re supposed to be. When they’re not, not only do we question just transportation, we question more systemically could there be other problems?”
Nelson said his 15-year-old son was dropped of at the wrong place at one point.
“For me, my son goes to school just a couple miles down the road," he said. "He wasn’t really informed, or it wasn’t communicated with him directly, that he needed to, I guess, take a different bus or route and he ended up being dropped off at a subdivision five miles from our house. So my wife had to go get him.”
Leander ISD said they're still working to fill 35 bus driver positions and they know the shortage is creating a lot of frustration for parents. They want parents to know they're working on it.
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You can read Leander ISD's full statement below:
"Leander ISD bus drivers do an amazing job of caring for our students. As LISD welcomes roughly 1,000 new students this school year, the focus continues to be safely and efficiently busing students to and from the district’s 43 campuses.
LISD currently has 35 bus driver vacancies to fill, and we continue to work hard to add qualified, caring transportation professionals to serve our 41,000 students. As we do so, Transportation staff members are driving buses to make sure that every route is covered.
With some 200 square miles to cover, logistical changes and challenges present themselves from time to time. We appreciate our community's patience as we work through these inconveniences at the start of the school year.
As always, we encourage parents to contact LISD Transportation whenever an issue arises so we can continue to improve our service."
“I really feel like bringing attention to this can possibly open up some more communication channels between the parents, the students and the staff of the district and make this district stand out even more,” said Nelson.
If you have concerns about buses with Leander ISD, you can contact them on their website.
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