Whitfield County Superintendent Danny HayesAfter missing a Monday deadline to improve its new busing system, Whitfield County, Ga., schools officials are taking more steps to help ease the transition to a new system of bus routes that began Aug. 9.
The county eliminated 11 bus routes, switched from door-to-door service to bus stops and launched new software to streamline its bus travel system and save the county money. So far, however, the improvements have caused more chaos than efficiency.
“I think that so far people have been saying that it hasn’t saved any time — and they are right,” said Eric Beavers, spokesman for Whitfield County Schools.
Issues with the new software appeared to be the cause of most of the complaints and problems during the first week of school, Beavers said. The software program was supposed to help students and parents find the closest bus stop to their address, as well as show the new bus routes.
“We knew it was going to be slow — it was taking about three minutes, which is an eternity in today’s society. The problem was it would sit there for three minutes, then it would come up and say, ‘you have been logged out,'” Beavers said. “We were hoping that the software would be helpful. When that didn’t work, we didn’t have a real good backup plan. That’s a failing on our part to plan.”