WEST FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) – Students who go to school in West Fargo could see some changes to their bus service starting this fall.
The District’s ‘walkable zones,’ – a radius of .9 mile around each school where students don’t qualify for bus transportation will expand.
“To shrink down the number of drivers that we are going to need, we are going to have a 1.0 mile at the elementary level, and a 1.5 mile at the secondary level,” Brad Redmond, Transportation Director Brad Redmond said.
The reason for the change – lack of school bus drivers.
“Currently, we have a critical staffing shortage of bus drivers. We went from thirty-four regular drivers down to fourteen, so we lost twenty positions over three years,” Redmond said.
West Fargo Public Schools have tried different strategies like increasing wages to recruit new drivers.
“We are very hopeful that as time moves on, that staffing gets better, and we can reinstate all these bus zones to where they used to be,” Redmond said.
The District hopes expanding walkable zones will help prevent bus cancellations.
Redmund said the number of students impacted by this decision will be in the hundreds.