Area parents who want their kids to ride the school bus this September need to get in touch with the Sudbury Student Services Consortium by the end of the work day Thursday, Aug. 20.
Parents need to opt in to receive school bus transportation this year, said Renée Boucher, executive director of the consortium, which co-ordinates school buses for all four local school boards.
They can let the consortium know their intentions through email at [email protected], by phone at 705-521-1234 (a note that the phone lines for the consortium have been very busy), or through the consortium’s parent portal at businfo.ca.
If you’re opting in through the parent portal, you’ll need your child’s OEN (Ontario Education Number), which you can find on their report cards. The consortium is contacting parents of JK students who don’t yet have an OEN.
Boucher said the consortium is asking parents to opt in for bus service this month as it works out assigned seating for children on buses, as per Ministry of Education guidelines amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The consortium needs to ensure that all students listed on a bus will actually take that bus regularly.
“So in the past, we did not need to have the assigned seating, but due to the pandemic and the Ministry (of Education’s) guidance, we need to ensure that the children are assigned in a specific seat,” Boucher said.
“If ever we need to work with public health and do some contact tracing, we’ll know exactly where the children were sitting down, and which child was sitting close by.
“(Parents) have until Thursday this week to opt in, and then next week we are doing all of the assigned seating.”
The province’s back-to-school plan provides direction to school boards for cohorting, or keeping the same students together in a small group throughout the school day to limit their contacts (100 for secondary students and 50 for elementary students).
However, children riding the school bus in this region will potentially be on board with students who attend several other schools.
Sudbury Student Services Consortium is one of the most integrated bus consortiums in the province, and some buses even have children from all four different school boards.
“Unfortunately we can’t change our runs,” Boucher said.
“The buses will continue to be integrated between schools … Had we had to change and go by cohort or go by school, I would have never had enough school buses to do the runs.
“Since 2002, when we became an incorporation, with the partnership between the four boards, we had to become more efficient in order to find savings for school buses in terms of transportation.
“We have become very efficient, but at the same time our runs have been more and more integrated between runs and between schools and between school boards.
“Over the years, we have removed at least 150 school buses from our roads, so to go back to a system where we only transport one school at a time, we would have had to add many, many school buses, and then we wouldn’t have had enough drivers.”
While students from different schools will potentially mingle on the bus, Boucher said the consortium has a plan in place that will limit students’ contacts while on board.
First of all, Boucher expects that buses will be emptier than usual, with some students opting for in-class learning, or parents driving their kids to school.
She said buses will be loaded from back to front, with the first students picked up being loaded at the back. Students who live in the same household or same neighbourhood will be seated next to one another.
Students in grades 4 to 12 are required to wear masks on the bus, and younger students are strongly encouraged to wear masks as well, especially while boarding or exiting the bus.
Boucher said bus drivers will also be provided with PPE, including two disposable surgical masks per day, as well as a face shield (they won’t be able to drive with the face shield down, but they’ll be able to use it while picking up or dropping off students).
She said parents will also be required to do a health assessment of their kids before they get on the bus, and if they’re exhibiting symptoms of what could be COVID-19, they won’t be allowed to ride.
“Parents need to ensure that if the child is symptomatic, they must keep them at home and contact the school,” Boucher said. “They will not be accepted on school buses.”
