Safe Start appears to be off to a strong start. The Lee County School District said a new effort to bus students to school in the mornings and back home again in the afternoons — both ways on time — is making a lot of progress.
The Safe Start initiative began in August. It's designed to spread out the start times for various levels of K-12 schools and tighten up bus routes.
The district said the morning on-time arrivals in September have risen from 71 percent last year to 91 percent this year.
Afternoon on-time arrivals have gone up from 60 percent to 79 percent.
"A lot of our priorities are student achievement," Rob Spicker, communications director for the Lee district, said. "And they can't learn if they're not there. We were in a position last year where 8,000 students were getting to school late, every single morning, because of the buses. We can't stand for that, it's unacceptable."
Spicker says the new routes give bus drivers much better chances to be on time. He said that alone is making the drivers feel better about their jobs, and become more committed to staying with those jobs. The district also is trying to hold onto substitute drivers, by raising their pay from $15 an hour to $19.
Spicker said the district won't relax until on-time arrival reaches 100 percent.
Mike Walcher is a reporter with WGCU News. He also teaches Journalism at Florida Gulf Coast University.
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