Since the Del Norte Unified School District has placed schools under closure amidst these days of distancing from COVID-19, some of you may be a bit confused to see school buses still quite active throughout the mornings. While these buses aren’t being used to pick up students, they’re still being used to help them in these confusing times.
Thursday morning, March 19th, I had the interesting experience of tagging along with Crescent City Bureau Chief Jessica Cejnar for a school bus ride along in the midst of their recently established meal delivery program. You can find her incredibly well-written article about the experience here!
We rode Bus 22, driven by Reese Trimm. Starting only last week after the closure of schools, the buses have been used to deliver meals to youth all across Del Norte County. They include breakfast and lunch, but sometimes they provide even more food: case in point, the Monday after the following weekend (the one coming up) is a Professional Development day, which would mean the buses will not be running its meal delivery route. So, they encouraged each and every parent and student on Thursday to bring a bag or backpack the next day, so that they could provide double the amount of meals to make up for Monday’s absence. This program is determined to not let children go without food!
On the first day, Reese Trimm, who keeps track of how many kids are receiving food, said that her route delivered meals to 162 kids; the next day, 111; the day after, 146; and, on our ride along, in the span of roughly 2 hours from just one bus, Bus 22’s team delivered meals to 186 kids, totaling at 372 meals.
Paige Swan, Crescent Elk Middle School’s principal, also joined us for this ride with the specific goal to hand out ungraded enrichment worksheets to students from Kindergarten to 8th Grade. These would help keep students occupied in an educational manner so that the closure of schools did not impact their progress too heavily. Paige Swan also informed us that the following week, similar worksheets would be created for high school and preschool students.
As this process goes on, changes are being made further and further to encourage the use of this program and assist in making it more accessible. DNUSD Transportation Director Derrick Campbell spoke to us about an app called “Here Comes the Bus” that would allow parents to track the progress of the buses on their routes, in order to ensure added safety and convenience. Update: the district has established their code for the app! If you’re interested in using it, download the app and input 86992 to track buses in real time!
Below, you can find the video to this ride along:
This experience is just one example of how our community has banded together in this time of worry and panic, in our distancing and closures amidst COVID-19. We are hoping this is only the beginning of many projects documenting these kinds of events. If you have any information or would like us to highlight other organizations taking actions like these to help in these times, please comment below and we’ll follow up with you!