Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) Superintendent Shawn Joseph said that the school district is working to have a solution to its busing problems by the start of next week.
Initially, around 10,000 students were not given bus routes to start the school year, but Joseph told News4 live on air that number is now under 5,000 students impacted.
He said while there has been a backlog of routes being impacted, the attendance rate this week is around 94%, meaning kids have still been able to make it to class.
PGCPS had said many of the issues stemmed from the school system’s new bus tracking app, Chipmunk. News4 asked him if it was tested before the start of the year. Joseph said they rolled it out last year and began testing it last year.
PGCPS Superintendent Shawn Joseph gives an update on bus issues.
News4 then asked him what the next steps are in making sure that all of this gets solved.
“At the end of the day, the challenge here, it’s complex. I mean, we are one of the largest systems in the nation and one of the largest busing systems in the nation, and we’re complex. We have 27 different specialty schools where we move students all around our county,” Joseph said. “But again, there is no justification for not getting it right on day one, and we’re working to resolve that. So by this weekend, we’ll have all 10,000 backlog students caught up.”
At a school board meeting Thursday night, the school board adopted a plan to audit the Chipmunk app and the contract it has with the company that owns the app to see if there are any issues there.
