School bus stress

DOVER — As the city School District works to finalize its first major school bus route overhaul in years to increase efficiency, one north end mother says she’s going to operate her vehicle like an unofficial bus because of how her neighborhood will be affected.

Amy Stocker, of Sullivan Drive, said she’ll drive her high school daughter and friends to school because the total daily round-trip bus time will dramatically increase, from 45 minutes to an estimated 2 hours, due to the route overhaul. Their home on Sullivan Drive is 4.6 miles from Dover High School. School opens Aug. 28.

“It’s just frustrating,” said Stocker, whose daughter is an incoming sophomore. “I want kids to get good enough sleep, and I don’t think two hours on a bus is time well spent.”

Dr. William Harbron, superintendent of the Dover School District, said the district-wide route reconfiguration is to combat systemic 10- to 15-minute morning arrival delays at the city’s three elementary schools.

According to Harbron, inefficiency in the old high school routes consistently put elementary school routes behind because the district uses the same buses (and staggered school start times) for both levels. One cause for the inefficiency, he said, has been the influx of new cul-de-sac developments as Dover has grown.

“We knew we had to look at the routes and population shifts,” said Harbron, adding the new routes eliminate many turnaround stops and the practice of bus drivers traveling into cul-de-sacs.

The route that serves the dead-end Sullivan Drive, bus D19, has historically been a contributor to late arrivals at Horne Street Elementary School, according to Harbron.

He confirmed D19 is the only one of the eight high school bus routes with total ride times will be lengthened as part of the ongoing effort to reconfigure the routes, although he said there are other routes that’ll retain ride times in the same range.

“We recognize this one particular route is longer,” said Harbron. “We’re working on it.”

During the 2018-19 school year, the 12-student Sullivan Drive stop’s morning pickup time was 7:15 a.m. and its afternoon drop-off time was 3:15 p.m. D19’s revised 2019-20 route, which has 42 stops, includes a new 6:32 a.m. morning pickup and 3:35 p.m. afternoon drop-off. Dover High’s daily start and end times are 7:40 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., respectively.

To Stocker, shifting pickup times earlier in the morning is unacceptable.

She cited studies that suggest student performance and wellness would improve if schools started after 8 a.m. (Similar studies were cited in Portsmouth and at Oyster River, where later start times were adopted.) Stocker also expressed concern about student safety due to the fact that earlier pickup times mean students like her daughter will be waiting at bus stops or crossing streets to get to them well before sunrise during the winter.

“I get there has to be a change,” said Stocker, who also has a son entering fifth grade at Dover Middle School this year. “I understand it’s a logistical nightmare (to manage routes), but we can do better and should do better for our kids.”

Harbron emphasized the times and proposed routes aren’t set in stone. He said the district is still working through all of its routes with First Student, its transportation company, to address concerns like Stocker’s and get individual students’ ride times down as low as possible.

“It’s not being ignored,” he said.

Harbron said it’s likely the routes will be adjusted shortly after school begins because the proposed routes are based on the address for every child eligible for bus transportation, not the number of students who will actually ride the buses.

“Ridership changes for high school buses” once school begins, Harbron said. “We just need time to work through it.”

It’s unknown how the reconfigured routes could generate cost savings for First Student or the Dover School District. First Student couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Harbron said the overhaul won’t directly save significant sums because the district isn’t consolidating routes or buses. Instead, he said, the area most likely to see a savings would be fuel costs if the new routes make the system more efficient.

Stocker raised her concerns at Monday’s Dover School Board meeting. She said she and other parents plan to see how things go during the first few days of school, then attend the Sept. 9 board meeting to provide additional feedback about the new routes.