Half of Durham Public Schools (DPS) buses arrived late to high schools in the spring, and DPS is hoping to change that.
It is physically impossible for many of these buses to bring students to school on time, according to Anthony White, executive director of auxiliary services at DPS. That’s because buses are making stops all across the county to bring students to magnet schools and drop non-magnet students at alternate stops requested by parents. Because high school has the last start time, delays from earlier in the morning trickle to later in the day.
DPS plans to partner with GoDurham to increase bus service to several high schools, aligning the public transit arrival times with school start times. The district will also launch “express stops” for Durham School of the Arts (DSA) and the Brogden Middle School dual-language program this fall, cutting the number of daily stops and requiring students to meet at central locations rather than door-to-door bus service.
“The goal is to allow students some optionality in how they get to school,” White said to the city council, county commissioners, and school board at a joint meeting on Tuesday. “We want to make sure that our yellow buses are getting there early and on time, and in the event that a student chooses to not get on the yellow bus, they can choose GoDurham.” There is not yet a date for implementation, he said.
The district collected data from April 7 to 10, tracking the percentage of buses that arrived on-time to school. That number was between 92 and 95 percent for elementary schools, at which buses are expected to arrive by 7:35 a.m. But at middle schools, with buses supposed to arrive at 8:20 a.m., 75% of the buses arrived on time. And in high schools, that number fell between 42 and 55 percent of buses arriving before 9:05 a.m. The expected arrival times allow for a 10-minute buffer before the start of the school day.
The pilot “express stops” will improve arrival times, White said, as DSA is the biggest factor that reduces on-time performance. Buses going to the magnet school were making 563 stops across the county, and the express stops will reduce that to 71, White said in an April work session. Parents pushed back at that meeting, citing equity concerns for families with less flexibility to take their child to a bus stop further away.
Students in specialty high schools and career and technical education programs already use express stops. The board initially proposed expanding express stops to DSA, Rogers-Herr Middle School, and the School for Creative Studies in December 2024, but halted the proposal later that school year to avoid further complicating the busing system.
The tardiness reflects longstanding issues with DPS’ busing system.
DPS bus drivers and mechanics went on strike in January 2024, after the district had taken back a promised pay raise for the district’s classified employees. At the start of the following school year, DPS was short 30 bus drivers, leaving students waiting for hours and causing headaches for parents. The district then implemented temporary rotational bus service, where groupings of schools took turns without bus service for one day per week.
Rotational bus service was replaced in January 2025 with “family responsibility zones,” 1.5 mile zones around certain schools in which the board voted to take bus service away to alleviate some of the strain on the transportation services. Prior to this change, any family in the district would be granted bus service if they requested it.
To the board on Tuesday, White said DPS is leaving the bus crisis “in our past” with bus staffing now in a better place than two years ago. He said there are 140 bus drivers covering all 138 routes, and the district seeks an additional 10 in order to be fully staffed.
Since the 2024 bus crisis, the district has worked to increase compensation for bus drivers. This year, drivers will get paid $20.22 per hour with a $200 monthly supplement, in addition to a $150 monthly bonus for perfect attendance.
“You have to continue recruiting,” White said to the board. “There’s not a time where you stop.”
The partnership with GoDurham that White introduced on Tuesday will focus primarily on older students who can take public transit independently, he said. The goal is to increase transportation options, and DPS buses will still continue to operate as usual under this program.
The district is likely to pilot the program at Northern High School, White said, which is already accessible by transit stops. The goal is to adjust existing transit lines to increase the frequency of buses.
In 2024, GoDurham increased its services to Northern and Riverside high schools from one bus an hour to every thirty minutes, said Sean Egan, the city’s transportation director. In 2025, bus service at Southern School of Energy and Sustainability increased from 60- to 30-minute frequency in 2025, and Jordan High School was added to a 15-minute service route.
As of August 22, two days before the traditional school year starts, Northern High School will get bus service every 15 minutes, Egan said. The district’s plan will entail working with GoDurham to ensure the arrival times are consistent with the school schedule.
“Two years ago at this time, Riverside and Northern High Schools were served one bus per hour,” Egan said. “Southern High School was served by one bus per hour. So even if that bus is on time, if somebody gets there three minutes after that bus departs, they’re waiting about an hour for the next bus, and that’s going to be really disruptive to students and teachers and educators.”
Mayor Pro Tem Javiera Caballero said it’s important to prioritize city infrastructure near schools as an investment in the future of public transit.
“High school students taking GoDurham isn’t just about safety and getting to class on time,” Caballero said. “It’s about increasing ridership for GoDurham. Long term, we want as many Durham residents to use our transit system, and the easiest way for folks to do that is to grow up riding the bus.”
Leaders hope that improving transportation will also address chronic absenteeism in the district, where more than half of the students missed at least 10% of school in the first six months of the 2025-26 school year.
Durham leaders attended the Greater Durham Attendance Summit on August 7 to discuss the root causes of absenteeism and identify ways to improve student attendance.
“Our principals and our teachers are working feverishly to make sure that our students are getting everything that they need, and our job is to eliminate the barriers so that learning can take place,” White said in an interview with the INDY.
DPS is also making changes to its crossing guard staffing and speed enforcement in school zones. White said schools have seen greater foot and car traffic since implementing family responsibility zones, due to more students walking, biking, and getting dropped off at school.
The district added nine crossing guard positions to six elementary schools in the 2025-26 school year, and will continue with most of those positions in the fall. DPS currently partners with the Durham Police Department for help staffing crossing guard positions, and it is considering hiring an outside agency, per White’s presentation to the board on Tuesday.
To address speeding in school zones, DPS is considering utilizing cameras to enforce speed limits in school zones and cars stopping for school buses. The district is on track to select a company to work with by October and install cameras by January, with a public information and community engagement campaign to follow.
If a car is speeding through a school zone, at a certain amount above the speed limit to be later determined by the district, the camera will take a photo of the license plate and mail a citation to the registered vehicle owner. Speeding tickets will not affect license points, and White said there will likely be a several-month testing period where drivers receive warnings, rather than tickets.
Egan said speeding is an issue across Durham and making school zones safe is a “critical goal.” He added that speed cameras in other cities have been widely effective in reducing speeding, with San Francisco seeing an 80% decline one year after cameras were installed.
Several council members raised concerns about these cameras, which would be installed on the “stop” arms of school buses and roadside in school zones. The city council approved a contract with Axon Enterprises in June to add in-car cameras and a drone fleet to the Durham Police Department and later passed a resolution to safeguard against sharing data with third parties, following public concern over privacy.
White said his team is working with potential speed enforcement technology vendors to ensure privacy protection.
“If we are able to move forward with this, our community has to know that riding past school is not something that’s going to put them in danger,” White said. “I don’t want families to be scared of schools and school zones as we try to move through this.”
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