CCSD Field Trips Now Rare
School Bus Driver Shortage Has An Impact
KVVU Fox 5 interviewed our Senior Director about how the school bus driver shortage was impacting school field trips.
A note about this story and it’s update:
After the piece we’ve linked to below aired, Clark County School District’s Media Relations office reached out to the Fox 5 newsroom to contest our claims that field trip buses would be extremely limited during the 2022-2023 school year.
They said, “CCSD Transportation has buses and drivers available for a large portion of the school day, specifically from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m, to accommodate field trips.”
They added, “Transportation likely has more field trip availability this school year as the low community spread of COVID has reduced some of the restrictions previously in place. The 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. field trip window has been a consistent window for field trips for a number of years as the primary focus in the morning and afternoon hours is getting students to and from school.”
First, we want to be clear that we have healthy working relationships and open channels of communication with many departments, schools, and individuals working throughout CCSD. We don’t have one with the media relations team yet, but it’s certainly one we look forward to developing.
Second, we want to clarify that our comments – and the budget adjustments we made in line with them – were based on communications we had directly with CCSD’s Transportation department. Our point of contact there clearly explained to us that buses for our courthouse fieldtrips were going to be unavailable during the 2022-2023 school year.
Third and finally, before this story aired, we had already been forced to limit the number of field trips offered to one school in particular, after they were unable to obtain CCSD buses for our courthouse field trips for a date coming up in early October this year. Again, this was before the story aired.
While we cannot account for the discrepancy between what we were told by the transportation office, the experience we had ‘trying anyway’ to have our fieldtrips booked in the same manner as they were prior to the pandemic, and the media relations comments made to the newsroom, we do look forward to greater availability of buses for field trip.
In a typical year, we provide over 100 courthouse fieldtrips serving nearly 6,000 students. At the conclusion of each trip, roughly 80% of students report somewhat to significantly being positively impacted in a socio-emotional-behavioral way as a direct result of their experience. Across the board at the end of the school year, our fieldtrips maintain a minimum 80% positive impact rate among the total number of students served – a rate we’ve maintained since we first began tracking that impact in Fall 2016.
Long story short, we look forward to a return to normal, and to once again having an opportunity to positively impact the lives of thousands of young Nevadans.
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Explore the original coverage at the link
https://www.fox5vegas.com/video/2022/09/13/ccsd-field-trips-now-rare-amid-bus-driver-shortage/
