LAKESIDE, Calif. — Arnold Kleinschmidt dreamed that his two grandsons 6-year-old Riley and 5-year-old Junior would catch the bus in Lakeside at the same bus stop he took as a kid in the late 1960's.
"Kind of cool that my grandchildren will be using the same bus stop, but now, I find out no more bus,” said Arnold, who's grandson Riley, turns seven on Saturday.
He just learned that a school bus will no longer come pick up his grandkids on Sunset Road to take them to Lemon Crest Elementary after his daughter registered Junior for Kindergarten.
"You can let us know when the bus is running 10 minutes late, but you couldn't let us know that the bus was not coming at all. To be blindsided by this, right before school starts, it is very frustrating,” Arnold said.
New Lakeside Union School District Superintendent Dr. Rhonda Taylor said the number of bus riders has declined over the last three years.
"We are owning that, and we could've been better at communicating with our families about the changes that we are putting in place. We are reducing our bus routes because of the fact that we just do not have the ridership,” said Taylor, who has worked for the district for 28 years and began as a student-teacher at Lakeview Elementary School in 1991.
Dr. Taylor said the reason behind the bus service discontinuation is also due to a drop in bus drivers.
“We lost about seven bus drivers between retirement or moving out of state, and there is a national bus driver shortage, so it is very hard to attract people to these positions,” Taylor said.
To save money, the district tried to move to vans instead of buses, however they learned there was a van shortage.
All of this is happening as Lakeside schools will be opening indoors for instruction and now school staff is under the state’s vaccination or weekly testing mandate.
"We are doing some work around right now to help those parents who are in a bind because of this cancellation, well it's not a cancellation it's more of a reconfiguration of our services,” Taylor said.
The Lakeside district will continue its routes for special ed students and to those in Barona and military housing condominiums when school begins Aug. 19. There is also a wait list for parents to sign up on the district site for those with no other transportation options for their children.
Arnold said his grandkids cannot walk two miles to school.
“It's just not safe, there are no sidewalks, and it is hard to cross the street. There were always a lot of kids taking the bus, and now, there’s going to be an increase in car traffic for drop-offs at school,” he said.
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