Bus Transportation FAQ's

Your child should arrive at the stop at least five minutes before the regular arrival time of the bus. If there is a substitute driver, the times may not be absolutely consistent with the regular times. If the bus is late ask your child to remain at the stop. Buses break down, roads are blocked, drivers become ill or have emergencies, but there will always be a bus at every stop. If the wait becomes extreme (approximately 30 minutes), please call Regular Education, Special Needs, and Express Routes 757.263.1545.

The Night Transportation Dispatcher can be reached between the hours of 5-7 p.m. at 757.263.2949. If there is a problem after 7 p.m. and on weekends, call the Virginia Beach City Police Department. The police dispatchers have a listing of contact telephone numbers for transportation supervisors and are able to contact whoever are required to handle any type of situation regarding school buses.

School bus sizes are stated in terms of passenger capacity for elementary school-aged children. It is assumed that elementary school-aged children will ride three per seat. Middle school students are assumed to ride two-three per seat. High school students are assumed to ride two per seat. If the bus has 3 elementary students, 2-3 middle students, or 2 high school students in each seat, it will seem crowded but it will not be over capacity. It is our goal to fully utilize all the space on all the buses in our fleet.

Virginia Beach City Public Schools' buses make two to four runs into and out of schools each day. We currently carry over 68,000 students to school and bring them home daily. On the majority of these runs, VBCPS buses achieve a load factor of more than 75%. However, we have many special programs that require that students be transported considerable distances. When transporting students to these special programs, the time length of the run sometimes makes it impossible to fully utilize the capacity of the bus. Often, however, as the bus travels within the school's attendance boundary it will stop and pick up additional students.
Examples of these special programs would be:

• Magnet schools and gifted and talented programs that encompass multiple base school boundaries and result in light loads due to the number of students involved and the time and mileage to the centralized locations;
• Alternative programs, vocational programs, alternative schools, and other programs with limited enrollment and central location result in light loads.
• Special Education Programs - Special education runs tend to be lightly loaded due to the small number of children assigned to centers and the boundary can be citywide
• Another reason is the school boundaries. Some school boundaries cover wide land areas that extend bus runs in miles and time resulting in less than capacity loads.

Our priority at the beginning of the school year is to provide transportation to all students who currently do not have a bus stop. This is a very detailed/complicated process. There are many variables that take place when we add or move a bus stop.

All bus stop change requests must be made in writing through the Transportation email address - VBCPSBusStop@VBSchools.com. The criteria that will be used to determine the need for change, can be found on our website. If you believe you have a valid bus stop change request after reviewing the transportation/bus stop criteria, please submit an email request. Be sure to include your student’s name, school of attendance, student ID, address, and a brief description of your request.

Once the email is submitted, it will be forwarded to the VBCPS Transportation Department area supervisor for review. Please allow 5-10 business days for your request to be reviewed and addressed.

Valid bus stop change requests for existing bus stop locations will only be accepted after October 4th for the current school year. Before that date, only new move-in stops or extreme emergency changes will be considered. To begin the new school year, bus stops must be consistent for time efficiency, student safety and driver's knowledge of route, especially substitutes.

All bus stop change requests must be submitted in writing. Please see the previous FAQ. In-Zone bus stops are typically designed to be within three-tenths of a mile for elementary students and five-tenths of a mile for middle and high school students from the residence.

All bus stop change requests must be submitted in writing. Please see the “How do I request a bus stop change” FAQ above. If you believe an unsafe situation exists, Transportation supervisory staff, familiar with the area and the traffic patterns, will evaluate your request. They will consult with the Traffic Engineering Department and the Police Department of the City of Virginia Beach when necessary. If further evaluation is required, the school system safety officer is consulted. Please allow 5 to 10 business days for a determination.

Visibility from the student’s home or other children in your home (siblings or daycare) is not a factor in determining bus stops. Bus stops are placed at centralized locations that can be safely accessed by a significant number of students to minimize the time length and mileage of the run. If you have concerns about your child's safety, you are encouraged to accompany your child to the bus stop or arrange a neighborhood buddy to walk with your child. If you need to request a closer bus stop, please see the “How do I request a bus stop change” FAQ above. All bus stop change requests must be submitted in writing.

VBCPS transportation eligible students are assigned to bus stops within the transportation guidelines for their type of transportation needs. Your student’s transportation information can be found in your ParentVUE account. If this information is blank or not accurate, please contact your student’s school to register for transportation. Assigning students to a bus and bus stop may take 5 to 10 business days.

Supervisors measure all distances over the shortest safe route between the property line of the home and property line of the school. Car odometers are not accurate enough to precisely measure the distance. The VBCPS regulation provides for transportation for all elementary students living in excess of one mile from school and for all secondary students living in excess of one and a half miles from school. Regardless of the distance, transportation will be provided if there is no safe walking route.

Typically, in-zone school bus stops are designed to be within three-tenths of a mile for elementary students and five-tenths of a mile for middle and high school students from the residence where time restraints, road conditions and vehicle access allows. Regular education school bus routes will not be established within a cul-de-sac or on a dead-end roadway where backing up will be required.

Students residing within their home school’s non-transportation zone are not eligible for transportation services. Only transportation eligible students, assigned to a school bus and bus stop, will be allowed to ride to and from school.

VBCPS regulations authorize us to provide transportation only on a space available basis to children attending day care services in the school zone they attend. Please contact your student’s school to provide the alternate transportation location (daycare) to be added to your student’s transportation registration. Only students registered and assigned to bus stops will be provided transportation.

The special needs transportation offices do not accept transportation requests over the phone. Transportation arrangements and changes must be coordinated through the Office of Programs for Exceptional Children or the administrative office at your child's school.

The basic purpose in spacing school bus seats so closely is to contain the child in a cushioned compartment with only a minimum amount of space between energy-absorbing surfaces.
After extensive research during the 1970's, the Department of Transportation and its agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determined that the safest and most practical arrangement for school bus seating would be a "compartmentalization" concept. Accordingly, the new safety regulations established in 1977 included this requirement among many other improvements made that year. Under the compartmentalization concept, seat backs in school buses are made higher, wider and thicker than before. All metal surfaces are covered with foam padding. This structure must then pass rigid test requirements for absorbing energy, such as would be required if a child's body were thrown against the padded back. In addition, the equivalent of a seat back, called a "barrier," is placed in front of the first seat at the front of the bus.

In addition to padding, today's seats also must have a steel inner structure that springs and bends forward to help absorb energy when a child is thrown against it. The steel frame must "give" just enough to absorb the child in the seat ahead. Also, of course, the seat is required to be anchored to the floor so strongly it will not pull loose during this bending action. The floor itself must be so strong that it will not be bent or torn by the pulling action of the seat anchors.

Finally, the requirement is added that seat backs can be no farther apart than a distance that is deemed safe. Clearly, if the backs were too far apart, the child could be thrown too far before being cushioned and/or could be thrown outside the compartment altogether. Today's rules call for a seat back to be no farther than 24" away from a defined point in the middle of a child's abdomen (the seat reference point).

Seat belts are not required in school buses because research by DOT and others determined that compartmentalization was a better solution, as mentioned under question #15. Some of the key arguments favoring compartmentalization over seat belts are as follows:

• Compartmentalization is more manageable. The protective surfaces exist in place without depending on any action by the children or any extra special supervision by the drivers. Seat belts require discipline and supervision to keep them clean, unraveled and in use.
• Compartmentalization works equally well for 1, 2 or 3 students per seat. Today's 39" wide standard seats may contain three small children or two large ones, or any combination in between. Arranging seat belts to properly handle any combination is difficult, if not impossible; the best known solution with seat belts is to restrict each seat to two students and two belts, which has the disadvantage of sharply reducing the carrying capacity of bus fleets.
• Compartmentalization works whether students have fully developed abdominal areas or not. Conventional seat belts, which are lap restraints only, are not suitable for small children whose abdominal area and bone structure are not adequately developed to take the force of a lap belt alone. They need the help of chest harnesses also, which adds to the complexity of a proper seat belt solution.
• Compartmentalization, once it has done its energy-absorbing job, leaves the student free to escape the bus. Seat belts could leave students strapped in, upside down, perhaps unconscious, in burning or flooding buses.
• Compartmentalization is most affordable. Although not a part of the DOT reasoning, this is a factor to be considered. In evaluating the cost of seat belts alone, one should include the cost of retractors and chest restraints also, since those appear needed. Even more important is the probability that a seat belt solution should lead to two students per seat and greater spacing between seats, thereby requiring more buses for the same student load.

The rated capacity of a 39" width passenger seat was devised many years ago by the committee then making recommendations to the National Minimum Standards for School buses. In determining seating capacity of a bus, an allowable average rump width standard was established.
Accordingly, 13" of rump width was suggested when a 3 - 3 seating plan was used. This suggested guideline is still recognized by most states as the accepted approach. It is not a federally mandated requirement.

No. State laws do not supersede federal requirements. State regulations for school buses can and usually do add requirements for safety. These requirements are additional to the federal requirements.

School bus drivers can have the same reasons as motorists for being late. Traffic delays, weather conditions, accidents or driver's illness are just a few reasons. School buses also have mechanical breakdowns or "no starts" that cause delays in picking students up on time. A school bus may be able to run but have a red traffic light malfunction which would make it unsafe to pick up or discharge students on our highways, before it is repaired. In cases where the regularly assigned bus or driver is unable to pick up students, a separate bus and driver are dispatched to pick up the students. Generally, when a bus starts out late on its first or second run, it continues to be late for its third or fourth run also.

In order to maximize the use of our school bus fleet and to provide a more efficient operation with as few buses as possible, schools are put into one of four distinctly different time schedules. That enables one bus to serve two to four different schools within 2 1/2 hours in the morning and afternoon. High schools are generally in the first time schedule, elementary schools on second and third schedule, and middle schools on the fourth time schedule.
Typical school operating hours can be found here.

Buses operate throughout the day with shuttles, kindergarten runs, and field trips, in addition to the normal to-and-from school transportation requirements. In order to have the required number of operational buses each day, a group of backup or spare buses must be retained. By state regulation, school buses are required to be serviced and inspected every 30 days. When a bus is in for service, a spare bus is required to continue its runs without interruption. Furthermore, when a bus has mechanical problems or damage from an accident or vandalism that require it to be out of service, a spare bus is needed to perform the duties of the out-of-service bus. Often, this can be for an extended period of time, especially in the case of accident repairs.

Spare buses are also used during the year to augment the operating fleet when new student transportation requirements necessitate that the daily operating fleet is increased. Because of delays created by the budget, procurement, and production processes, it can take from nine months to a year for additional buses to arrive. During that time, the spare buses are used to satisfy the requirement.

A school bus is a vehicle that is sold or introduced in interstate commerce for purposes that include carrying students to and from school or related events but does not include a bus designed and sold for operation as a common carrier in urban transportation.

A school bus can be used to carry non-students, if local rules allow it, usually with the requirement that school bus signs and warning lights not be used. But a normal everyday transit bus or shuttle bus cannot be used to carry school children. Such buses do not have any of dozens of safety features required on a school bus, such as joint strength, roof strength or compartmentalized seating.

VBCPS regulations authorize us to provide transportation only on a space available basis to children attending day care services in the school zone they attend. Please contact your student’s school to provide the alternate transportation location (daycare). Only students registered and assigned to bus stops will be provided transportation.

The child's parent or guardian must send a written request to the school principal. If approved, the principal will provide written authorization to the driver of that bus.

Drivers check their buses after every run. Items left by students are held by the driver for several days and may be claimed on the bus by the child. Fragile items are often taken out of the buses in the evening for their protection but, will be available the next morning. After several days the driver will make an effort to locate the owner. Unclaimed and unlabeled items are donated to charity. You can help by labeling all of your child's school belongings with the child's name and school.

There is no regulation requiring school bus assistants on school buses. The assignment of school bus assistants is determined by the needs of the children riding the school bus.