Murray County Schools will have to temporarily cut up to three bus routes due to losing 15 bus drivers, most in the last month.

Bus routes will be facing a tough road come opening day

Students on certain bus routes will find themselves without a bus come Tuesday’s first day of school. Steve Loughridge, superintendent of Murray County Schools said they simply won’t have the drivers.

“We’ve looked at this every way possible,” he told the board of education.

He said the system is 15 drivers short. Seven new drivers have been hired, but cannot start driving solo until they drive a route, with a certified bus driver.

He said three routes are affected, two from Murray High School and one transferring between Murray High School to Gladden Middle School.

When asked what solutions had been tried, Loughridge said they were using drivers who don’t normally have full-time routes, they had contacted former driver’s seeing if they would come back temporarily.

WATCH VIDEO OF THE MEETING HERE.

When asked about combining some of the shorter routes, Loughridge said they’d looked at that, but most of those routes were in the North Murray district and when they looked at combining them, the routes would take several hours, getting kids to school at 9:30 a.m. unless they picked up kids very early.

He also said they would not combine elementary with middle and high school routes.

Murray Virtual Update

Kelly Rogers, left and Barbi Kendrick update the board about Murray’s virtual Academy.

The Board of Education learned that Murray County’s Virtual Academy had 1,190 register for online school.

The school will have a “soft”opening come Tuesday, one week will feature all English-Language Arts classes one week and their other classes the following week.

“This will allow us to handle any issues so that no one, parents, students, or staff get overwhelmed,” said  Kelly Rogers, director of elementary education for the virtual academy.

But she anticipates all issues will be worked out within those two weeks and explained the process to the board.

“We’re running two school systems, one great system, but two very different platforms. It’s a great accomplishment,” she said.

Gladden Middle School

The school will be ready for the first day of class on Tuesday, although the gym and kitchen won’t be completed, Loughridge told the board. While the lunch room is ready, and new kitchen equipment is on hand, the school has to wait for a new transformer from Georgia Power. In the meantime, lunches will be prepared elsewhere and brought to Gladden for students. He hopes this work will be completed in two weeks.

The gym should be ready by October, ahead of the opening day of volleyball season, he said. While the gym will be usable before then, it will not have bleachers.

Kathy Smith, the new finance director for Murray County Schools.

In other Murray County Schools news:

• Kathy Smith was hired as the new Director of Finance.
• Parent portal will have a link for filling out the paperwork sent home at the beginning of the school. The information will transfer year to year allowing parents to simply make changes where needed.

Featured image Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

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