Weekend Roundup: August 4-6
August 2, 2023
Downtown Thibodaux to welcome Propel Learning Academic and Tutoring Center by the end of August
August 2, 2023
The Terrebonne Parish School District has released all-new bus schedules for the 2023-2024 school year.
“Throughout the entire year last year, I heard concerns from four groups,” said Superintendent Bubba Orgeron. “The first were teachers. Teachers were constantly concerned about the late arrivals of kids in the classroom. They are missing breakfast, they are coming in late, and missing classroom instruction. Secondly, I heard it from principals. In every principal meeting we had, kids arriving late was the number-one agenda item. The third group was parents. Parents called who were concerned about lost instruction time, as well as kids who were missing after-school activities because they were getting home at 5:30 or later. Lastly, I heard from bus drivers, and they expressed that we need new drivers and adjustments to our routes,” Orgeron said at the August 1, 2023 Terrebonne Parish School District Board Meeting.
Orgeron explained that following this information, the school board tracked times that students were arriving at school, and unfortunately discovered that kids were arriving roughly 30 minutes late daily– which amounts to about 3 weeks of lost instruction time total. “Missing 30 minutes of school a day is a huge problem,” explained Orgeron. Despite extensive marketing procedures to recruit new bus drivers to help with the workload, the Terrebonne Parish School District was still 28 bus drivers short, causing current drivers to double up on time-consuming routes.
Orgeron continued that despite the efforts of the bus drivers, there were still simply too many stops to get kids to school in a timely manner. “We had a choice to make,” said Orgeron. “Do we keep letting kids come to school late or do we do something different? We can’t rely on these excuses and not do anything else. It’s going to be a tough adjustment, but students can’t keep arriving at school late.” Based on their shifts, the Terrebonne Parish School District will go from 28 vacant bus routes to just 9.
Routes will now have designated safe, communal, walking-distance bus stops, with each stop being no further than 200 feet from the furthest assigned houses.
There will also be smaller, no-service zones within a quarter mile from each school, instead of a mile. Each ring is not a perfect circle, but rather an irregular shape, to make walking distances safer. These changes are meant to improve the safety of local students as well as maximize instruction time.
For details about the exact bus route plan and what is changing, please click here.
To find your child’s nearest bus stop for the 2023-2024 school year, please click here.
