At the Sept. 1 meeting of the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce's transportation and governmental affairs committee, Smith explained that his bus drivers had to cover more routes than usual and fill in when others were unavailable.
“It was a stressful year, but I’ll always say last year was one of the more inspirational years of my career,” Smith said. “We were 125 drivers short last year and with absences, we were covering anywhere from 175 to 225 positions a day in our department.”
While CFISD is still short on bus drivers, Smith and his team worked with the administration to move the district from a three-tiered bell system to a four-tiered bell system. These systems stagger school start and end times to allow buses to carry as many students as possible between different schools, he said.
“So by doing this, we’re able to provide the same level of service with fewer buses,” Smith said. “Now instead of our buses serving three schools, a number of our buses can serve four schools.”
The four-tiered bell system is also used in other large districts such as Houston and Dallas ISDs, which are the only two districts statewide that have larger bus fleets than CFISD, Smith said. However, he said CFISD is the state’s largest student transporter with more than 80,000 students transported daily.
Smith provided more statistics on the district’s transportation department over the years, showing a comparison of how many students the department served with the assets it had.
