The new school year began with changes for many Greenbelt students.
At Greenbelt Elementary School they welcomed the new year with a new principal, Latasha Dorsey (see the August 13 issue).
Greenbelt Middle School is still engaged in a search for their next principal to replace the beloved Marcellus Clement and begins the year with Camille Butler in the interim role (see the July 23 issue).
Springhill Lake Elementary (SHLES) students began classes in their temporary new home for the next two years: the old Dora Kennedy and, before that, the Greenbelt Middle School building, off Greenbelt Road and Edmonston Road. SHLES plans to return to a new building at their prior location for the 2028-29 school year (see the July 16 issue for the groundbreaking).
Meanwhile, Dora Kennedy French Immersion (DKFI) students began a new school year in a new location, the site that was their home over a decade ago and is a shared space with Robert Goddard Montessouri. DKFI is now just outside the Greenbelt city limits in Seabrook.
Chipmunk Challenges
Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) asked for patience with transportation during the first days of the school year but had been touting increased staffing and real time bus tracking. This year PGCPS opened the year with the bus tracking app Chipmunk, which they’d rolled out gradually over the last school year. Chipmunk replaced StopFinder, which parents had criticized and reported as unreliable or inoperable for years. A PGCPS announcement on Tuesday advertised the app as enabling real-time tracking and providing accurate ETAs and alerts. However, it was not working Tuesday morning for its first-day debut. At approximately 9 a.m. a message from “the PGCPS Chipmunk Team” acknowledged the app’s failure, apologized for the inconvenience and said they were working to resolve technical difficulties. At 12:13 p.m. an email notified the community that the technical issues were resolved. However, numerous Greenbelt parents said their bus was “Not Reporting” for the evening.
Parent-Led Communication Shines
Foreseeing problems with transportation communications and their single entrance road, parents from the co-located Robert Goddard and DKFI schools worked together in advance to create a spreadsheet of every bus route serving the schools and a WhatsApp group for each route. On the first day parents sent each other messages reporting where the buses were on their routes, sharing arrivals at the stops they were waiting at or information gleaned from trackers some had placed in backpacks.
In front of Greenbelt Library, parents used those WhatsApp groups to share bus arrival information in the morning, when the DKFI/Goddard bus was over 30 minutes behind schedule, and in the evening, as they waited for their children to return on a bus that was close to 50 minutes late.
On another route that serves College Park and Greenbelt, Vincent Alexis-Laona has a kindergartener at DKFI. On Tuesday morning the bus entirely missed their stop. Though the scheduled pickup was 8:52 a.m., at 10:06 the Chipmunk App had begun working and they saw the bus was a few stops away. They received a notification it was four minutes away, before the app showed it turned out of their area. Alexis-Laona told the News Review his wife was able to drop off their child, “which was a crazy experience itself because of how terrible traffic is in and out of the road that the school is on,” and she arrived for her very first day of school 90 minutes late. At DKFI and Robert Goddard the car line stretched through intersections and along surrounding roads on Tuesday.
Naette Lee, another DKFI parent, was unable to use Chipmunk because her 6-year-old has not received an afternoon assignment in the system. Her child, on the same route as Alexis-Laona’s was supposed to arrive at his bus stop at 5:22 Tuesday evening, but it was 6:12 when he finally did. One parent was chasing the bus after it failed to stop at the stop their child should have gotten off at, said Lee. “A mess,” said Lee. “But the WhatsApp group is on top of it,” Lee told the News Review. “People are sharing Apple Air Tag screenshots.”
Laura Hood reported her student’s bus was scheduled for 8:12 a.m. and didn’t pick up until 9:03 a.m. Tuesday. Then, in the afternoon, the driver wouldn’t stop at her child’s designated stop, even after the student asked. The student got off at another stop and walked to her zoned one, which Hood said meant her daughter had to cross a busy street full of rush hour traffic to meet her.
There are usually delays and disruptions to buses in the first days of the year as the county tries to find drivers to cover each trip, drivers learn their routes and as the list of students for each bus changes and is finalized. The number of “vacant” routes (those without drivers), as well as substitute or temporary drivers, and students without assigned stops all impact efficiency.
“I would say … we have been dealing with these transportation concerns and delays for as long as we have been at Dora Kennedy, [beginning] in 2021. This year felt different and more chaotic, but I was prepared for the chaos,” Hood told the News Review. “My heart goes out to all the new students and parents to PGCPS who are experiencing the stress for the first time. This shouldn’t be their first impression,” said Hood.
After 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday PGCPS announced it was unable to field one of the bus routes for DKFI and parents were being called to pick up their children still at the school.
The author has two children who attend DKFI.
