Jefferson County School Officials: 'Bussing less important than we all thought'

Letter from Jefferson County School District Officials re: eminent mass failure of poor students.

Dear North Area Community, 

At Jeffco Public Schools, we understand bus service is a vital, critical and essential part of the educational experience.  We strive to provide this vital, critical, essential service to every student.

Having said that, we will be cancelling all bus service.

Bussing has been downgraded from the vital, critical and essential categories to the 'optional',  'nice-to-have' and 'no longer a service we provide' categories.

Due to circumstances far beyond our control, but which we long ago suspected would happen, our school system has failed to recruit, hire, or retain drivers.

Please be aware that we exerted tremendous effort to work our current drivers to exhaustion.  But alas, we failed. Some would call us failures. We don't agree.  

For starters, the bus driver shortage is puzzling in a country with so many cars, so many drivers. Just as puzzling was the slow, steady and consistent exodus from the district of the majority of our low paid, under-appreciated bus drivers. 

To counter this, we came to the difficult decision to tweak our service by suspending the following bus routes both temporarily and permanently:

-- Routes that serve the north, east, south or west areas of the school district.

-- Routes the serve the central region of the district.

-- All future bus routes that we had hoped one day to provide.

On the bright side, we will continue bus service to and from Germany, Purgatory, and the moon.

We understand this change in service directly impacts your student(s). For some, it could be one more factor in a galaxy of unfair misfortunes that have beset your student(s) and threatens their ability to graduate. We understand this will inconvenience to your student(s)'s ability to succeed in life. 

Remember that truancy and tardiness will continue to result in immediate suspension.