State officials investigate Jasper County schools after year of bus driver shortages
S.C. Department of Education officials were in Jasper County Wednesday to investigate districtwide transportation woes that have been going on since at least the beginning of the school year, a department spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
The department officials were in the county to begin “investigating transportation practices” after receiving complaints from Jasper County families, department spokesperson Ryan Brown said.
“Today, SCDE staff is in the district conducting a student ridership count,” Brown said.“The SCDE is also looking into services that must be provided to students with disabilities that they may have not received as a result of the aforementioned transportation issues.”
School Board Chair Carolyn Bolden said Wednesday that she had no knowledge of the SCDE investigation and her “understanding was that we had made those [transportation] accommodations with their families.”
“There have not been any complaints from special ed parents,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Our common goal is what is best for the students in Jasper County.”
The investigation comes after parents say they have submitted letters to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division and the South Carolina State Ethics Commission over transportation issues and a “lack of communication” from the school district. As of Wednesday, SLED has not received an email or letter, according to its spokesperson Renée Wunderlich.
In a Tuesday night meeting of the Jasper County United Association (JCUA), made up of parents and community members in Jasper County, parents expressed their anger and desire to “fight together” for a solution.
“This issue should not have gone this far,” said Surrenda Burrison at the meeting. “If we work together, we can get some things accomplished in Jasper County.”
Since at least the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, the school district has struggled to find drivers for its buses, resulting in parents driving students to and from school.
Myra Ulmer, who worked as a driver for over three decades with the district, told a reporter that the issues began last summer when drivers asked for a raise. In response to the raise request, drivers received a letter on June 4, 2021, stating that their positions would be “eliminated” and replaced with driver paraprofessionals that would begin that month. In a letter this month, officials explained that the modified responsibilities was the district’s way of accomplishing a pay increase.
Drivers left in droves, Ulmer said, and it was not an easy decision. Since then, the district has struggled in hiring replacement drivers and has tasked staffers who volunteered to obtain their commercial driver’s licenses with driving buses. Currently, the district has 10 drivers, with more on the way.
“By the end of this week or by next week we’ll have four additional drivers,” Bolden said.
‘Nobody told me’
In the months since the start of the school year, parents have been tasked with getting their children to and from school, which has resulted in some of them losing jobs over the transportation issues, according to previous reporting by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. Because of the shortage of drivers, some bus routes are “inconsistent,” according to Jasper County parent Shakima Dupont. The Thursday before spring break, she said, she received a call from her children while she was at a doctor’s appointment saying that the school bus never came for them.
“It has been a last-minute notification,” Dupont said. “I called the school district to find out what happened and I was told, ‘[The bus driver] came earlier because we had to do a double route.’ Nobody told me.
“Everything is a mess,” she said. “Some of my friends, they’re in a situation where they can’t afford to miss any more days of work or be late anymore. They’re so frustrated and overwhelmed.”
Dupont no longer reaches out to the school district, she said, because they go in “circles” and she feels that it is a “waste of time” for both sides.
“Since the community has been getting together ... [Superintendent Rechel Anderson] and the school board have been a lot more vocal,” she said. “They didn’t start posting these community meetings until the community took it upon themselves to post their own meetings.”
In their frustration, JCUA has met regularly at the Euhaw Baptist Church on Bees Creek road, but will soon be moving to Hardeeville to accommodate more parents, organizers said. The parents have started a change.org petition calling for Anderson’s removal. It has garnered over 600 signatures since it was posted Monday.
Among complaints about the bus shortage, parents allege that Anderson had violated her employee contract because a court document from a lawsuit filed in 2018 lists her as a resident of Beaufort County, instead of Jasper.
Bolden said Wednesday that the superintendent “lives in Jasper County.”
School board members Joyce Gerald and Louise Rawlings declined a request for comment. Gerald said that the board has a policy regarding who may speak to the media.
“It’s better to hear these things from the persons that are directly responsible for those areas rather than snippets of information being filtered through individual perspectives,” Gerald said.
Anderson and Jasper County School District spokesperson Travis Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 5:58 PM.
