Suburban Growth, Tight Budgets Mean Bus Rides to School Can Be Long Ordeals

By David Nakamura

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 10, 1997; Page D01

The Washington Post

Each morning at 7:10, Hope Griffith boards Loudoun County school bus No.238 in Middleburg, plops down in her assigned seat two rows from the front and wonders what she'll do for the next hour and 15 minutes. Reading or finishing homework is hard on a bus that's bouncing and swerving along dirt roads. So the 13-year-old spends much of the ride talking with friends, putting on makeup and listening to music on headphones. Sometimes, she naps before the bus reaches Leesburg's J.L. Simpson Middle School, where Hope is in eighth grade. Her trip is about 20 miles, but it seems much longer because of the constant stops.

"The ride is way too long," Hope said. "We get up earlier than everybody else, and then we don't get to school until everyone else is in their chairs." School bus rides are getting longer for many children in the Washington suburbs as student enrollments surge and new subdivisions spring up in once-remote corners of the area. With more students to pick up and more housing developments to cover, buses are having to make more stops. And school officials are finding it increasingly difficult to add buses because of tight transportation budgets and a shortage of drivers.

In Loudoun, Hope is one of about 100 students with a bus ride of more than an hour each way, despite the school system's goal of trying to keep all trips to less than an hour. About 250 students in Prince William County and several dozen in Charles County ride for more than an hour.

More densely populated counties have more schools, so bus routes generally are shorter. But some rides are getting longer there, too. Johnny Forte, a Fairfax County assistant school superintendent who oversees transportation, said he has fielded calls from parents who wonder why their children are on the bus more than 30 minutes even though they live less than 10 miles from school.

In the outer counties, complaints about long rides often come from new residents, school officials said.

"People's expectations are higher now," said Loudoun School Board member Harry F. Holsinger (Blue Ridge). "People move here from Fairfax or from other counties, and they expect the level of service here that they used to get there. For us, it's a tremendous challenge to get all the students to school from some of the remote areas."

Parents say the lengthy trips tire out their children, make it harder for them to focus on homework, leave little time for after-school activities and sometimes cause discipline problems.

"It's unfair to the kids, and I hate it 100 percent, with all my passion," said Margaret Hancko, whose 12-year-old daughter, Anna Badyoczek, takes the same bus as Hope Griffith and rides it for just as long. "When she comes home, she relaxes a half-hour, does her homework and the day's over. This influences everything -- style of life, whether we go somewhere in the evening. If she wants to play soccer and go to an arts program, there's no way she'll have time."

Hope says she gets home at 4:30 p.m. and routinely misses half of her soccer practice. She also says that it's harder to stay out of trouble on a long bus trip. She was disciplined by the driver for switching seats while the bus was moving, something she attributes to restlessness.

Loudoun has Virginia's fastest-growing school system, with about 2,000 students added a year. Finding money for the new buses needed to keep pace with enrollment growth is difficult enough, officials say. But on top of that, the district is about 25 drivers short of the 262 driver slots funded by the school budget, said Michael Lunsford, the system's director of transportation. It's a job that's hard to fill in a strong economy, he explained.

And most of the new drivers and buses he has are being sent to the county's more populous eastern side, where bus routes generally are shorter but the buses are more crowded and students often sit three to a seat. Students in western Loudoun must wait until the crowding in the east is alleviated before the district can focus on cutting the length of their rides, Lunsford said.

"Any time you have a choice, you have to address overcrowding first," he said. "Overcrowding is a safety issue. Length of ride is an inconvenience."

That is a matter of perspective. William Kosmann, whose son Jason travels on Loudoun bus No. 238, said long rides are a potential safety hazard because they increase the chance of a traffic accident.

Jason, a seventh-grader at Simpson Middle School, believes his bus ride could easily be shortened. He wonders, for example, why the bus picks up students in the Greenway subdivision near Leesburg.

"Our last stop, the Greenway, takes 20 minutes," he said. "But those kids are only on the bus for four minutes, then they get off. I don't see the point in that."

Lunsford said he will consider taking away that portion of bus No. 238's route -- as soon as he can find another driver and another bus.

But school officials said that in many cases, the only way to address families' complaints would be to run buses that are not filled to their capacity. And that would not be cost-effective, they said.

"There's no way to reduce the distance or go any faster," said James Bettis, director of transportation for Prince William schools. "The only way to do it is to reduce the number of kids per bus. But you have to be economically reasonable and reasonable to the student -- and those two things don't always cross."

Santy DiSabatino, director of transportation for Charles County schools, said it costs his district about $37,000 a year to put a bus on the road, including salary, equipment and insurance. "But then you get into weighing that versus more textbooks and teachers -- what is your priority?" he said.

Another reason that Loudoun bus No. 238 takes so long is that, like many buses in outer counties, it serves a middle school and a high school at the same time. When the bus arrives at Loudoun County High, the students from Simpson Middle School must wait about 10 minutes for the high school students to disembark. But school officials say it would be pointless to have two buses running routes that are virtually identical.

By the time the Loudoun bus had reached its final destination on a chilly morning last week, the students seemed anxious to get up and stretch their legs. But Troy Thomas, a ninth-grader who has been making the commute for three years, didn't seem too concerned.

"I really don't care about it anymore because next year I'll be 16," he said, "andthen I'll be able to drive myself to school."

) Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company