SORTA and CPS leadership to meet Tuesday, discuss safe bus routes for students

Leaders from the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) and Cincinnati Public Schools will meet Tuesday to discuss a safe solution to getting students to school despite the transit authority's driver shortage, district officials said Monday.

The meeting is set for Tuesday afternoon at CPS offices, CPS chief strategy officer Sarah Trimble-Oliver said during Monday evening's board of education meeting.

"I'm in full support of however you are going to fight this and I will be there with you however you go about it," Cincinnati Federation of Teachers president Julie Sellers said to the school board during the meeting. She encouraged parents and students to call the transit authority to express their safety concerns.

The transit authority released new bus routes in late July that eliminated specific "Xtra" Metro bus routes that served mostly CPS students. It claimed CPS had been privy to those plans, and had even been involved in those discussions. But some district school board members were surprised by the new plan when it was announced. The district then put its transportation department leader, Loren Johnson, on administrative leave after officials said Johnson made decisions without involving CPS senior administration or the board. A human resources investigation is underway.

"It is unfair to expect schools, students and families to have full awareness of, much less understand, such an abrupt change announced only a few weeks prior to the beginning of school. It has resulted in chaos," board member Eve Bolton wrote in a letter on behalf of CPS to transit authority board chair Kreg Keesee on Thursday.

CPS interim superintendent Tianay Amat also sent a letter on Monday, to Cincinnati city manager Paula Muething and police chief Eliot Isaac, requesting their advocacy to restore Metro's previous Xtra bus routes for students.

More than 13,000 preteens and teens rely on Metro to get to and from school, Amat wrote. She said the district hopes to meet with transit official soon "with a goal of restoring Xtra routes before the start of school." CPS's first day of school is Aug. 19.

"While CPS understands that some students will have fewer transfers, the reality is that thousands of students who otherwise would have had direct transportation will now have to transfer each morning and afternoon," Amat wrote. She said 58% of the district's seventh- and eighth-grade bus riders would be required to make a bus transfer under the new plan.

Amat also listed safety concerns regarding the delta variant of COVID-19, the large number of students who would wait unsupervised for the regular Metro buses at school dismissal if SORTA's plan were to be realized and overcrowding on Metro's regular routes.

The transit authority held a public information meeting on Thursday and maintained that the new plan would be beneficial for students and families. Xtra bus routes were often skipped last spring – as frequently as 300 times a month – due to the transit authority's driver shortage, transit officials said. The new routes were created by carefully looking at Cincinnati student bus rider addresses and plotting out the most convenient stops.

The Metro debacle does not affect the school district's yellow bus routes, officials said. Those schedules have been finalized and families should receive a memo this week.