As we officially end the first week of schools, we wanted to check in with Department of Public Works to see how school buses are this year and if everything is running smoothly.
According to DPW Director Vincent Arriola, school opening week was a success except for a few reports of kids being late to school on their first day.
“There were some buses that were a little bit late at a few of the schools and the reason for that was we had a lot of parents dropping off their kids so there were traffic jams at a number of schools,” Arriola said.
However, that’s not the only reason that might be causing the delay in some schools. Arriola said they are currently addressing another issue regarding access points into schools, which have an adverse impact on traffic flow.
“One of the areas we were looking at was the ingress and egress at Okkodo. We have some issues there so we got out engineers out there first thing in the morning to see what we can do because there’s only one access to that school and that’s not a good thing. So we’re going to have to work with GDOE to perhaps open up another access road in the backside of Okkodo or on the southside of Okkodo,” Arriola said.
Every year, the Department of Public Works has a shortage of school buses or school bus drivers. This could pose a huge problem to students on island who heavily rely on the school bus transportation system.
According to Arriola, they will be transporting about 20,000 students this school year, and that includes both public and private school students.
In order to ensure that they are fully equipped in transporting this precious cargo, our school children, Arriola says that they are planning on purchasing 10 brand new school buses.
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