Messy Start To School In Gilmer County

Ugly. There’s just no other way to put it. The first day of school in Gilmer County got off to a wretched start, with some parents panicked over the whereabouts of their kids and children reportedly wetting themselves after being stuck on a bus for hours on-end. Heat exhaustion, no water and no facilities. Scores of parents recite similar accounts of a challenging day for all concerned. And as of 6pm Friday, some students had yet to make it home and were still stuck on a school bus.

“I dreaded today all summer long, but it actually turned out far worse than I expected,” said parent, Sherri Crooke Hulsey.
Hulsey knew the day would be tough, because there are so many changes for her two children: there are new bus routes, students heading to different schools, even the bus stops are new. This is the first year drivers are picking up students at a point outside their subdivision instead of in front of their homes. For whatever reason, it appears the morning went more smoothly than the afternoon trip home.

Several parents say the county’s 47 buses all left from Clear Creek Middle School around the same time, causing a backlog from the start. The buses soon ended up in a traffic jam along Georgia State Route 5. One mother, Misty Dove, says her son ended up on the wrong bus and she felt like she had a “missing child” for at least half-an-hour.

Dove says she filled out all the required paperwork to make certain her two sons were able to ride the bus today. She says her oldest child, a 10-year-old boy, was put on the wrong bus. Dove said when her son told school staffers they had made a mistake, they told him to stay put. Around 5pm, two hours after class had been dismissed for the day, Dove said she received a recorded phone message from Superintendent Bryan Dorsey, saying the buses were running about 30 minutes behind. But when her youngest son arrived home a short while later without his brother, she knew she had reason to worry.

“He was crying,” said Dove. “He knows they’re supposed to be on the bus together. He was upset. I was upset. My husband was upset. We had a missing child.” By 6pm the boy made it home and Dove’s angst converted to disgust for what her two children had experienced on a day that was extremely stressful under the best conditions.

“I’m a nervous wreck still.”
-Misty Dove
Gilmer County Parent

What makes Dove’s story unique is that her son ended up on the wrong bus, but almost all of the students experienced long delays on the afternoon bus ride home. “What makes me so mad is they had all summer to figure this out,” said Hulsey.

Superintendent Dorsey didn’t try to minimize Friday’s challenges. He readily acknowledged the district’s bus loading plan needed major revisions, which he vowed would happen by Monday. The district’s transportation department actually works on the bus route loading plan on it’s own. When asked, Dorsey said mistakes made today would not be repeated.

He also said the district was so focused on making sure children got on the right bus on this first day of school, that the second part of the equation, the efficiency factor, suffered. Dorsey said significant changes would be in place by Monday, but those changes would all be made by staff members — parents and children would not be burdened with any more changes.