PORT ANGELES – Planning the school bus routes for the next school year is complicated for the Port Angeles School District by the planned closures of two bridges and one school.
“We’re just in the process of putting together next year’s routing,” District Transportation Supervisor Jerry Eldred said Thursday.
“Hamilton, Dry Creek, Stevens, the high school and special needs students all use Eighth Street, plus we have the realignment in the same year, so it will be interesting,” he said.
The Eighth Street bridges will be closed later this summer for about 18 months while they are being replaced.
At the same time, the Port Angeles School District faces an additional transportation challenge because of the realignment plan the board approved in November 2006.
When the 2007-2008 school year begins, Fairview Elementary School will be closed and all seventh and eighth graders will attend Stevens Middle School.
All the district’s sixth graders will attend elementary school and Roosevelt Middle School will become Roosevelt Elementary School.
So while everyone else is just figuring out how to get around and between the two missing bridges across Valley and Tumwater creeks, the school district also must redraw all its bus routes for the reorganized schools.
When it’s all figured out, the district will post information on its Web site, www.portangelsschools.org and send letters to students’ homes in August, Eldred said.
“We’ll have more information then,” he said.
“The boundaries are not determined yet because of the transition.
“Because we have two things at once with our transition and the city’s transition, we’re trying to get everything working together.”
