A Prince George’s County school board committee discussed the county’s bus driver shortage and improvements to communication with parents on Wednesday.
Prince George’s County Public Schools is short nearly 200 bus drivers despite reducing the number of routes, according to Keba Baldwin, PGCPS’ transportation director. The bus driver shortage has resulted in bus delays, Baldwin said.
PGCPS moved to a new standardized bell system to help mitigate the bus driver shortage, according to the school system’s website. Start times were reduced from 13 to three, and dismissal times were lowered from 17 to six across the county to increase efficiency, according to the system’s website.
The system also currently has 847 drivers covering 1,035 routes, Baldwin said during PGCPS school board’s operations, budget and fiscal affairs committee meeting. But because of the continued shortage, some buses have continued to see delays.
PGCPS is addressing these delays by placing employees at every bus lot to help with communication through SchoolMessenger and the StopFinder app, which allows families to track buses in real-time, Baldwin said. StopFinder will be updated daily with new bus information, Baldwin added.
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Notifications about late buses and bus changes are also being sent by email, text or phone call, Baldwin said.
The Transportation Resolution System, which allows community members to submit tips about transportation concerns, has been a valuable tool in addressing concerns, with an average of about 150 requests each day, Baldwin said. More than a thousand requests sent since Aug. 12 have been resolved, Baldwin said.
The committee also discussed the school system’s transition from SchoolMAX to a new family portal from Synergy called ParentVUE. Synergy replaced SchoolMAX beginning this school year, according to the PGCPS website.
The portal allows parents to see student grades, attendance and other information.
[PGCPS school board discusses bus driver shortages, transportation improvements]
Just more than 55,000 accounts have been activated on ParentVUE as of this week, according to Andrew Zuckerman, the school system’s chief information and technology officer. This is comparable to the 58,000 accounts activated on SchoolMAX’s portal at the end of last school year, he said.
PGCPS is hoping to launch a system-wide campaign to register families in Synergy ParentVUE later this fall, Zuckerman said during Wednesday’s meeting.
Zuckerman said PGCPS hopes to increase enrollments in ParentVUE by 10 percent, which he thinks can be surpassed.
Shayla Adams-Stafford, the District 4 school board member, suggested the school system use tools PGCPS already has in place, such as parent resource centers, to help increase ParentVUE enrollment.
