Transportation a Major Issue in Hybrid Transition

As the Wenatchee School District (WSD) continues to work through their plan to eventually transition secondary students back to the classroom, transportation has become one of their biggest issues.

The transportation issues mainly start and end with a lack of drivers. Even before the pandemic, there was a national shortage of school bus drivers. Now, the district would require more than its usual number of drivers due to the need to keep students safely in their cohorts.

"At this point it doesn't appear that we have enough drivers to fully staff all of the routes that we would need in order to bring our students back." Communications Director Diana Haglund said, "We are looking at a lot of different possibilities to make that happen."

The district is currently in talks with Link Transit about ways they could collaborate to increase capacity for secondary students comfortable with using the transit system. WSD also recently wrapped up a parent survey that asked about student ridership.