PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD — Thousands of students started off the school year without having an assigned bus, and even more kids missed the bus after the new bus tracking app crashed.
The new bus-tracking app, called Chipmunk, apparently crashed in the morning but resurfaced later in the day.
School officials later said that dozens of bus routes and hundreds of bus stops had not been assigned buses before the first day of school on Tuesday.
On Monday, the school district posted on Facebook that bus stop assignments were still being finalized the day before school started. Bus assignments were to be released in stages based upon when a student's registration was completed. Parents were informed in the Facebook post to use ParentVUE or the Chipmunk app.
Initially, parents were concerned about the number of vacancies in bus driver positions, as they were last year, but that wasn't as much of an issue on the first day, leaders said.
"We have 40 vacancies out of the 1,100 buses that we have, which is good," Prince George's County Public Schools Dr. Shawn Joseph told WJLA.
At a news conference held Tuesday afternoon, PGCPS Chief Operating Officer Charoscar Coleman said approximately 10,000 students were affected by the transportation breakdown.
"Our goal is to have every student arrive on time and safely. We didn't meet that mark," Coleman said during the news conference. "Our message to families is that we will do better."
Coleman said staffers hadn't fully learned the new bus routing system and didn't properly match students with buses and routes in time for the start of school. Additional personnel have since been assigned to this project to alleviate the routing concerns.
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