Mel-NAP Supt. Kimberly Soranno
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
MELVINDALE – The Melvindale-Northern Allen Park school district is still struggling to arrange bus transportation for its student body, Supt. Kimberly Sorrano said, a month after four third-party vendor-supplied bus drivers quit.
She said the district needs five bus drivers, and they are currently unable to bus the general education students. The district is able to supply bus transportation for its special needs students who attend classes in other districts.
Soranno said they have investigated numerous sources in an attempt to find bus drivers.
“We have exhausted every avenue that we can find, and we are open to anything,” she said. “We have called every bus driver company that there is, we have called the airport, to see if we could hire through them, we’ve called SMART buses – everybody is having a difficult time.”
Soranno said they have called taxi services for some of their special education students, since bus drivers cannot be found.
“We called bus companies that are servicing other counties,” she said. “I regularly contact our Wayne County Superintendent Daveda Colbert, and state Rep. Cara Clemente.”
Soranno said some school districts across the country have called upon the national guard to drive school buses, and said school districts in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, and on the west side of the state, that are experiencing the same difficulty finding bus drivers.
“This is not a Melvindale issue,” Soranno said. “It is across the country that this is happening.”
She said some senior citizen bus drivers quit because many of the students are too young to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and could potentially expose the drivers to the coronavirus.
Soranno said absenteeism has increased with the district not being able to provide transportation.
“We always have about 95 percent of our students attending, and we have never had a problem with attendance,” she said. “Now we are at 91 or 82 (percent) some days.”
Soranno said the district is paying employees overtime to monitor the traffic flow during drop off and pickup time.
“It started off rough at a couple schools, but they have taken care of it,” she said. “But even our employees that are coming in extra time and doing the traffic control are getting exhausted, because they are coming in for the morning, and then they have to come in for their afternoon shift. They get off their afternoon shift, and then they have to be somewhere at 6:30 a.m.”
Soranno said more students are depending on rides than are actually walking to school.
“I am worried because we’ve got students who do not have two vehicles at home for parents to drive them,” she said. “We’ve offered to help them get carpools, but people don’t want to send their kids to school with people they don’t know, and COVID is part of it.”