There were a handful of hiccups (and sweaty kids) on the buses for 1st day of school

A handful of transportation hiccups — about six mechanical breakdowns, too-early pick-ups, late drop-offs, a shortage of bus drivers and a few crowded afternoon buses — were reported on the Beaufort County School District’s first day of school.

Thursday’s first-day transportation issues are “no different from any other year,” district spokesman Jim Foster said.

However, soaring temperatures were a particular concern for some parents who raised questions Thursday evening in an online Facebook group about the lack of air conditioning on the buses.

The first day of school fell in the middle of a heat wave and on the second consecutive day of a National Weather Service heat advisory.

Temperatures were in the mid-90s throughout Beaufort County on Thursday at 3 p.m., meteorologist Carl Barnes said. But with humidity factored in, the heat index was higher, surging to 104 in Beaufort and 110 on Hilton Head Island.

Heather Hood, a Bluffton mother of three, said she planned for her children to take the bus this year, but based on how Thursday went, she said she will be driving them herself going forward.

“They all got off the buses sweaty and really thirsty,” she said, noting her children arrived home 45 minutes late. “Kids should not be forced in these temperatures. ... It’s too hot for that.”

South Carolina has no laws relating to air-conditioning school buses, and only a few dozen of the district’s 130 state-owned buses have air conditioning. The 44 district-owned buses all have air conditioning.

Emily Quesada’s son rode in an un-air-conditioned bus Thursday.

“He told me he was so hot, and they wouldn’t put the windows down,” the Hilton Head mother said. “He’s only 5.”

Windows are permitted to be open, Foster said. He added that some of the district’s buses have white roofs, a relatively new design feature that keeps the bus’s interior cooler.

Weather woes aside, the district transported an estimated 12,000 students on 143 routes — but only had 138 drivers. Five supervisors or dispatchers filled in, though that’s not a viable long-term option, Foster said.

“One thing we weren’t prepared for were really crowded buses in the afternoon,” Foster said.

In some cases, an additional bus was sent to relieve the crowded one. In others, students remained at their schools until drivers were finished with their first routes, at which point drivers returned to the schools to pick up the waiting students for a second route, a practice known as “double-routing.”

Some parents were a little more forgiving last school year when the district took over its own bus management after 20 years of using contractors. Even with the switch in management, double-routing was a problem that lingered into spring because of a bus driver shortage.

Foster was unsure of the number of double-routes run on Thursday.

Late drop-offs can be traced to new bus riders in the elementary grades, he added. Additional time is needed to get students on the right buses, which means the buses leave the lots later than planned, creating a domino effect of late drop-offs that can span into the middle and high school runs.

Foster said the bus routing issues will be worked out in the next few days.

This story was originally published August 18, 2017 at 5:17 PM with the headline "There were a handful of hiccups (and sweaty kids) on the buses for 1st day of school."