P.E.I. schools reopen despite few school buses running
School bus routes are too complicated to tweak, says English Language School Board superintendent Cynthia Fleet, and having families drop kids off was the best solution to getting schools open again.
Poor road conditions gave P.E.I. students an extended March break. They were due back Monday, but storms over the break left many Island roads too narrow for school buses to navigate.
School was back in Thursday but buses weren't running at most schools, instead it was up to families to deliver students. About 80 per cent of Island school children are bussed.
Only the Colonel Gray family of schools, Souris Regional School and Ecole la belle cloche had bus service. Fleet said with 14,000 individual bus stops, it would have been too complicated to try to make fine adjustments.
"When we start shifting bus stops, or when we start moving a bus route and saying the driver can do half the route or all of the route or go over here to pick up kids, that's looking for trouble," she said.
"We have to make sure that what we avoid is any confusion or chaos today. So we have the plan kept simple."
Fleet said bad weather on the weekend contributed to the cancellations this week, because some school principals faced travel disruptions and were delayed getting back to the province after March break. This made planning difficult.
Individualized plans for pick-up and drop-off at each school were only finalized Wednesday afternoon.
Fleet is warning parents and other drivers there will be higher than normal volumes of traffic around Island schools during pick up and drop off, and is asking motorists to slow down and exercise extreme caution when approaching school zones.
