West Fargo Public Schools expanding walkable zones, cutting off certain students from riding bus

WEST FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — Despite many students enjoying summer vacation, West Fargo Public schools are already making key decisions for the upcoming school year.

The school district always had a 0.9-mile radius from a school called a walkable zone, where students did not qualify for school bus transportation.

But those walkable zones are going to expand for next year.

“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.” says Brad Redmond, Transportation Director, West Fargo Public Schools

The reason why lies in the 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.” says Redmond

West Fargo Public Schools have tried different strategies like increasing wages to gauge more interest.

“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.” says Redmond

The school district hopes the tactic of expanding walkable zones will help evade bus cancellations.

“This is one of the things that we are doing to hopefully not have to do cancellations. We are going to start the year and we are going to have enough drivers to cover the routes, but it will mostly depend on if we continue to lose staff and not gain staff.” says Redmond

He adds the number of students impacted by this decision will be in the hundreds.