Durham Public Schools Says All Bus Routes Are Being Covered

View This Email In Your Browser

Good morning, readers.

Happy March. The weather is warmer, the days are longer, and Durham public school buses are finally getting all students to class—sort of.

“Since January 23, all of our routes have been covered,” DPS CFO Larry Webb repeatedly said (along with a rotating series of transit puns) at city and county meetings that I had the pleasure of attending last month.

While covering all current routes sounds like a low bar to clear, it is a real improvement from the beginning of the school year, when a bus driver shortage left some students waiting hours for buses that never arrived.

The district has taken the obvious step of hiring more drivers. It has also, by shifting the transit burden to some families, reduced the overall number of students covered by “all routes.”

So what’s next? Will elementary schools keep family responsibility zones? Will some magnet schools begin using express stops in the fall as announced earlier this year? Is this reduced coverage the new normal for DPS?

Administrators, seemingly wanting to avoid making promises they can’t keep, have been pretty vague about the answers to those questions. That’s left parents (and your INDY team) feeling like this crisis isn’t quite over, despite the recent progress.

Read my latest installment in our ongoing DPS bus coverage here and drop me a line at [email protected].

Have a good Monday. After all, it only comes once a week. 

 —Chase

---

Durham

INDY’s Lena Geller reports on one group seeking to reframe prenuptial agreements “often seen as unromantic or even mercenary—as tools for fostering honesty and equity in relationships.”

ICYMI: The city of Durham is now taking ideas for how to spend $2.4 million through participatory budgeting, INDY’s Justin Laidlaw reports.

Wake

Road closures will begin in downtown Raleigh next month as work gets underway to move Red Hat Amphitheater, ABC11 reports.

Orange

UNC is still evaluating options for a potential relocation of the Dean E. Smith Center. The Daily Tar Heel reports on some possible sites.

North Carolina

If Congress decides to cut federal funding for Medicaid, it could trigger a reversal of North Carolina’s Medicaid expansion initiative, leaving hundreds of thousands uninsured, NC Newsline reports.

North Carolina firefighters battled more than a dozen active wildfires over the weekend, including a 500-acre blaze in Polk County, WRAL reports.

---

If you’d like to advertise your business to the Daily’s 30,000-plus subscribers, please contact [email protected]

---