JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — As Jeffco Public Schools continues to grapple with a bus driver shortage that caused the district to suspend dozens of bus routes, parents are working together to get their kids to and from school.
“We've worked pretty hard to get a carpool together,” said Guy Morgan, whose daughter's bus route was suspended. “It's a slow process. Everyone is trying to figure it out, get their boss's permission to be late, I mean, anything we can do to make it work."
Morgan said he’s been preparing for the route suspensions for weeks.
“We were getting daily emails about other buses being canceled and it would be last minute cancellations also — we would get it the night before. I saw the writing on the wall,” Morgan said.
Morgan said with no news on when routes will resume, him and his wife are trying to recruit more parent driver’s for the carpool
“We love the school, so we're going to try our best to make it work, but having the bus there definitely helped us make our decision to take our daughter to D'Evelyn. Just because her friends are there, everything we liked is there,” Morgan said.
But Morgan said not having the bus as transportation option is causing his family to rethink that decision.
Jeffco Schools announced the suspension of nearly 30 bus routes last week. The suspended routes include all bus routes for Option Schools and 19 neighborhood routes serving the west and north area.
The district previously told Denver7 that the Jeffco transportation department is down 81 drivers.