The Bryan school district’s new superintendent continues to apologize for snags in busing students.
Christie Whitbeck initially brought up what she called transportation issues during Monday night’s board meeting.
On Tuesday, Dr. Whitbeck issued a statement announcing the hiring of an outside expert to provide assistance.
She says Bryan police has placed additional officers at various campuses to help improve traffic flow.
She also asked parents driving their children to carpool if possible, and she encourages parents placing children on buses to use the district’s online transfinder system.
Whitbeck says additional employees are working at the district’s transportation call center, which follows call volumes so high it impacted phone lines around the district.
Click below for comments from Christie Whitbeck following the Bryan school board meeting on August 21, 2017.
Statement issued by Christie Whitbeck on August 22, 2017:
While I am deeply appreciative of the patience our families have shown and the professionalism of our staff, I am greatly disappointed in the back-to-school transportation issues our students and families have faced. I apologize for the frustration and delays our families and kids have experienced. Though still somewhat new to Bryan ISD, it is my responsibility to ensure we are fully prepared to address change as it approaches. It is also my responsibility to immediately deploy resources to solve problems.
Therefore, some of the solutions we quickly placed in effect led to a quicker, smoother operation this morning for our two transportation hubs. While we have not resolved all of the problems we are facing, we have several solutions already underway, including bringing in an outside expert to assist with routing issues. We are also partnering with Bryan Police to place additional traffic officers on the scene at various campuses to help improve traffic flow. We have deployed extra staff to our Transportation call center and are working to answer phones, return calls and respond to messages as quickly as possible.
Our students and families have faced delays and confusion in the past two days. Additionally, we experienced high call volumes that left family members on hold for long periods of time without having their concerns addressed. Many of these issues were avoidable, and I regret the human error involved. I want to assure our community that we will address all necessary training and staff issues to prevent a recurrence.
In short, despite an otherwise smooth start to school, we were not as prepared as we should have been with respect to transportation. We are devoting extraordinary effort to fix those problems immediately. The safety of children is foremost on our minds, and I am personally overseeing the effort to ensure these mistakes do not occur again.
I thank our families for supporting Bryan ISD as we work to improve, and I appreciate our staff for their patience and solution-oriented attitudes.