On a recent Wednesday, Justin Jayne waited to pick up his first-grade daughter at her regular school bus stop in southwest Denver. She didn’t get off the bus.
"A bunch of kids got off the bus. Thea was not among them," Jayne said.
The bus drove off.
"I wound up driving to the school. The staff did not know what was going on," he said.
After about 90 minutes of confusion and multiple phone calls between parents, school staff, and the transportation department, Thea was eventually found at Place Bridge Academy, a different school served by the same bus route.
"She was very upset. She was crying, very scared," Jayne said. "She came here, at the drop-off, she just didn't recognize the stop, and she's new to the bus. She's a first-grader, she's never ridden the bus before."
Thea’s story is not the only one. Parents say a McMeen Elementary child was left on a bus the week prior. That incident, plus chronically late buses, have prompted Jayne to start driving his daughter to school.
It’s been a rocky start to the school year along some Denver Public Schools school bus routes, where parents are grappling with late school buses or children forgotten at stops.
DPS’ Transportation Department acknowledged the problems in a statement, saying families "have experienced some severely late service from time to time."
"This is not the level of service we strive to provide for our students, school or our community.”
The district said it’s taken a deep dive into data and has made temporary immediate changes to fix severely late issues by rerouting buses. Additional staff have been assigned to the customer service center to handle increased call volume.
“Our routing team is meeting twice a week to troubleshoot and test potential changes,” a statement read. “We are looking at other resources such as contract services to possibly handle the service of routes that are extraordinarily long or are transporting single students. We haven't worked out all of the issues, but we are committed to getting it right for our families.”
'Very out of character for its usual consistency'
The problems appear most severe on routes serving McMeen Elementary in the city’s southwest, where parents have organized informal safety networks and some have abandoned bus transportation altogether after weeks of unreliable services.
"We've been DPS parents for eight years, so I've been so dismayed about how the bus has been operating this year because it is very out of character for its usual consistency," said Angela Selzer at a McMeen Elementary bus stop. "We have no reliability that the bus is going to come on time and pick our children up."
She said the parents have come up with a system to have older children make sure the young ones get on and off the bus.
“That is problematic,” she said.
This year, the district rolled out My Ride K-12, also used by the Cherry Creek School District, a parent information portal to allow parents to see where their child’s bus is. It is also supposed to let parents see when their child has boarded or exited the bus. The district said drivers can scan younger students.
But Seltzer said she hasn’t seen the scanner part of the technology to know when students get on or off. She said a friend in Douglas County hasn’t had problems with that district’s scanning system called Smart Tag, with the app version released in 2024 to allow parents to receive push notifications.
Daily disruptions for families
Shane McIntyre, who has two children on the route, said the transportation problems have forced parents to completely restructure their daily routines.
"We've had to go pick them up from school, because we'll get notifications either the bus hasn't come at all or just recently there was a day where we got a notification that it was going to be 60 minutes late," McIntyre said. "The staff at school has to drop everything and stay to watch the kids, and then parents have to drop everything to come and get the kids."
Parents report buses arriving 20-40 minutes late regularly, with some instances of hour-long delays. One family stopped using morning bus service after their daughter, who uses a scooter due to a foot injury, faced daily uncertainty about whether different bus drivers would allow her assistive device on board.
Ten-year-old Evelyn, a student interviewed at the bus stop, said late buses are a pain.
"Even if the bus picks us up on time, when we get to school, we're usually late, which is kind of annoying because we have schoolwork to do," she said. She said students in grades K-4 must check in at the front office when late, while older students miss the beginning of classes.
Parents interviewed at one bus stop noted that they have the privilege and flexibility to drive children when buses fail. Many families along the route lack this option.
McMeen Elementary has about 650 students. Two-thirds are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and half are English language learners. Another school on the route that has experienced lots of bus problems is Place Bridge Academy, the district’s most culturally and linguistically diverse school and home to the city’s Newcomer Center with over 47 languages spoken.
"I am sure there are families who drop their kids off at the bus in the morning have to go to work and they are counting on the bus to be there at the time it's supposed to be, not 30 minutes late, not 60 minutes late," McIntrye said.
Communication breakdown
Parents say their attempts to get information or resolve problems have been met with an unresponsive system. They said the customer service line at 720-423-4600 is frequently busy, calls go unanswered, or messages are left without return calls.
"Oftentimes the phone is just busy and nobody picks up or nobody picks up or we leave messages and we don't get return phone calls," said McIntrye.
Parents also report receiving confusing communications from the district, with emails signed only as "Transportation Team" rather than from identifiable staff members, making accountability difficult.
“It's just been a nightmare to deal with anybody from the district,” said parent Jon Mattes-Ritz.
McIntyre said sometimes they’ll get notifications for other bus routes or a notification that their bus is going to be an hour late bringing kids back from school so staff will have to drop everything to watch the kids.
District response and driver numbers
Data provided by the district suggests some of the transportation challenges may stem from staffing issues. DPS currently operates 216 bus routes with 203 total drivers as of Sept. 1, compared to 190 routes with 193 drivers at the same time last year.
This means the district is trying to serve 26 additional routes (a 14 percent increase) with only 10 additional drivers (a 5 percent increase). This year the district has 82 drivers working 32-hour shifts while last year it had 102.
But district officials say the challenges are more than the ongoing shortages of bus drivers. Every year, students transition from elementary to middle to high school and some schools have closed. Not all students enroll in a school in the first week. So often, the district has to wait for data on where the students are attending the school, “and then balance the resources of our multi-model transportation system,” officials said.
The district said despite the challenges, it’s been able to maintain an overall 96 percent on-time scheduling so far this year.
