Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Plan for RTC to bus some CCSD high schoolers seen as welcome solution

CCSD and RTC Partnership Announcement

Christopher DeVargas

Clark County School District officials announced Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, that 15 high schools in Southern Nevada will start having students ride regularly scheduled public transit to and from campus next week.

Michael Plummer has been taking the public bus to school for most of his years at Spring Valley High, meaning a recent decision by the Clark County School District to partner with the Regional Transportation Commission on student transportation in the face of a severe shortage of school bus drivers works perfectly for the student.

Plummer, a senior, was caught outside waiting for a late bus during a rare snowy day his freshman year — buses were often late then too, he said, though not as extremely behind schedule as they are now. He switched to RTC buses not long after that cold morning.

With Spring Valley High a short walk from Flamingo Road, an arterial road through the valley dotted heavily with RTC stops, Plummer, who only has a learner’s permit, is well-positioned to independently get to school and elsewhere around town.

CCSD and RTC Partnership Announcement

Spring Valley HS senior Michael Plummer speaks to the press regarding his personal experience using RTC to to get to-and-from high school Wed, Oct. 6, 2021. Launch slideshow »

“For me to get to work, I have to take an RTC bus. Without that, I wouldn’t be able to go to work every day,” said Michael, who works at In-N-Out Burger. “And I definitely wouldn’t be able to do any clubs,” when school buses are limited.

CCSD will start using public buses to get students to 15 high schools starting Monday. The RTC Ride-On program will be free for students at Spring Valley, Bonanza, Chaparral, Cheyenne, Desert Oasis, Cimarron-Memorial, Clark, Del Sol, Desert Pines, Durango, Green Valley, Las Vegas, Liberty, Sunrise Mountain, Valley and Western high schools who already qualified for busing. CCSD stops for those schools will be eliminated when the program begins.

Most students will catch the standard city buses that stop closest to their homes and schools. Students at Liberty and Desert Oasis will use an RTC on-demand service.

The passes are free to students and can be used anytime, not just to and from school, and will cost the district about $1.17 million. School and transit authorities formally unveiled the program Wednesday at Spring Valley.

Public buses in lieu of school buses are commonplace in other major metropolitan areas in the country, CCSD Transportation Director Jennifer Vobis said. Public schools in Baltimore give city bus passes to children as young as middle school and only bus some elementary pupils. Schools in the District of Columbia provide no routine yellow bus service at all.

Vobis said those scenarios aren’t happening at CCSD. Mike Casey, CCSD’s chief operating officer, also indicated that the RTC partnership would be limited to these 15 high schools near high-traffic routes, as RTC is also facing a driver shortage.

Francis Julian, deputy CEO for RTC, said RTC is accommodating students on existing routes with already-high capacity and high frequency of stops. This makes waits relatively short.

For safety, Julian said every bus is outfitted with 12 video cameras, and feeds can be pulled up at a command center. Each bus can also be tracked in real time on a mobile app, and drivers are trained in National Safe Place protocols for youth in crisis. These are security features offered to all riders and similar to features on CCSD buses.

RTC buses also have armed security patrols on some routes.

Plummer, who has been paying for his bus fare, is used to the bus and would prefer it as a practicality, even if he did have a car — why use his own gas when another service is going to the same destination, he reasoned.

And drivers are used to teens, Julian said. Students don’t get school busing unless they live more than two miles away, which can still be too long to care to walk. Others may want to do after-school activities, too.

“In front of a school like this one it’s not uncommon to see 20 or 25 students board the bus as it is right now,” he said.