Bus stop: Parents scramble to get kids registered for transportation as Aug. 30 nears

Terry Webster

Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2001 | 10:54 a.m.

Information on the school district's busing policy is available by calling the phone bank at 799-8111.

Let the mad rush begin.

To set up bus service for students, the Transportation Services Division of the Clark County School District is expecting up to 8,000 telephone calls a day from now until school starts Aug. 30.

Of the 80,000 students expected to be eligible for school bus service, fewer than one-half have registered so far.

Ideally, parents should register their children for bus service no later than June, said Nancy Cardenas, a routing and scheduling specialist.

"On the first day of school, we'll have buses that are overcrowded, because parents called in too late," Cardenas said.

Only students living more than two miles from their schools are eligible for bus service from the district. Others must make their own arrangements for getting to school.

"We'll have about 50,000 parents calling in by Aug. 30," Cardenas said.

Part of the problem, transportation officials said, is that all schools are not keeping parents informed about how to apply for bus service.

The transportation department requests that bus registration information be given to all new students when they register for school.

Additionally, not all parents realize they must re-register for bus service every year, transportation officials said.

The sixth-largest school district in the country, Clark County's current student population of 231,000 is expected to increase to 246,000 this fall.

For the coming year, transportation staffers have already set the routes. Now the buses have to be filled.

Around a dozen phone operators, most of them temporary employees, are on hand to field calls during the work week from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

By the time the task is finished, the district's 1,000 buses will be filled to capacity.

Calls to register come in to the phone bank, where operators punch in the student's name and other information.

The computer automatically tells operators the student's school and whether the student is eligible for bus service.

The computer also maps out routes, bus stops and bus number information. Finally, an analyst double-checks the information to make sure it coordinates with the driver's route.

"If we tell them they are not eligible, they say, 'What do you mean?' " Joel Williams, a phone bank operator, said. "Some of them are actually surprised that we provide it. Some places make parents pay for busing."

Others admit that parents can get "pretty irate" when hearing the news that their child won't be getting bus service.

The transportation operators "just have to be pleasant," Cardenas said. "That's part of dealing with the public."

If all of that isn't enough, analysts also have to deal with the changes that come with families moving in and out of Clark County and within the district.

During a regular week, routing and scheduling analyst Cindy Pool said she fields about 25 requests for bus route changes a day.

Analysts work in groups organized by the kind of academic program students attend -- regular, special education and magnet schools.

"The calls never stop," Ed Hale, another routing and scheduling analyst, said.