Thumbnail photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews
Skylar Lambeth was blunt — the bus being late 48 times is inexcusable.
The Del Norte High School student said her first grade has suffered and she’s missing “entire units” of history due to the late bus. Her peers could have made similar statements to the school board, she said Thursday, but they rely on the bus to return home.
“I feel Klamath kids have been forgotten about too many times,” Skylar said. “Klamath kids often get seen as lazy and not caring about grades, but that’s just not true. Us Klamath kids have bright futures, but this takes education away from us and that’s just not fair. This situation could make us fail our finals.”
Three members of the Del Norte Unified School District Board of Trustees heard from Lambeth and from her classmates’ parents on Thursday. Trustees Don McArthur and Abbie Crist, who represent constituents in the Crescent City area, were absent as were Superintendent Jeff Harris and Assistant Superintendent Tom Kissinger.
After more than 25 minutes of public comment, which included the threat of a lawsuit if the late buses continue next school year, Board President Charlaine Mazzei said she asked Kissinger how the Board could support students whose academics are suffering due to the late buses.
“He’s not here tonight, but I will make sure that he has a heads up that we’d like an answer for that at our next meeting on June 4th,” Mazzei said.
Mazzei said the truancy issues and notifications for Klamath parents to answer to the School Attendance Review Board “should be erased.”
“It’s not the kids’ fault…” she said.
Chrystal Helton, an ’O Me-nok Learning Center teacher who lives in Klamath Glen and who has two children attending Del Norte High, listed the dates the bus had been late for Mazzei and her colleagues between the day the school year began through Thursday morning. Forty-eight days is 26% of the entire school year, Helton said. Tony Fabricius and Alison Eckart, principals at Sunset and Del Norte High Schools, school counselor Shannon Walkley and Crescent Elk Middle School staff member Jen Feliciano were using vans to bring Klamath kids to school, Helton said.
Helton reminded the Board that under its 2009 settlement agreement with the plaintiffs in Gensaw et.al v. Del Norte County Unified School District, the school district is required to provide transportation for middle school students in Klamath. She called on trustees to establish a policy that provides a “clear plan for what’s going to happen” when school resumes this fall.
“We will have a lawsuit ready next year,” Helton said. “This is an equity issue. Our students do not have equitable access to their education at this point when a quarter of their school year is being affected by a lack of bus drivers.”
According to Helton, it was Skylar’s mother, Jeanette Lambeth, who first began calling the school district after her daughter received an absence from her first period class due to the late bus.
Lambeth said her daughter had been marked absent from her first period class at a time when she knew she was on the bus heading to school. When she went to the DNHS attendance office for answers, Lambeth said the staff member asked her if Skylar had notified attendance that she was late.
“I told her that no one had ever told my daughter that she had to go there first before going to class,” Lambeth told Redwood Voice Community News. “Skylar confirmed that no one told any of the Klamath students, so I had Skylar start telling the other students.”
On Thursday, Helton told trustees that she also received a truancy letter, the first she had received in 17 years of being a parent.
“We are asking that our kids’ truancy records be updated to reflect that they were late because of the bus,” she said. “One of the other things our students are experiencing is when they come to school, the person they’re checking in at the attendance office (with) is sometimes making them feel like ‘Oh, you’re late? Oh, what happened?’.Our kids don’t need that.”
Helton also asked for a policy that ensures transportation to and from Klamath continues even when bus drivers call out sick.
Two weeks ago, Helton and another Klamath parent, Brie Fraley, held a meeting to try to come up with solutions they could present to the School Board. On Thursday, Fraley told trustees that they’re also part of a Facebook group parents use to help keep each other informed about late or missing school buses.
At the group’s April 29 meeting, Fraley and Helton circulated a community survey asking families to describe the challenges they face due to the tardy buses. Those challenges include financial impacts, she said, in addition to the academic setbacks their kids have suffered.
“Some parents have to take vacation time and so they’re missing out on pay,” Fraley told trustees, citing the survey. “They have to leave work in order to get their children to school, so that’s impacting them financially as well. And we’re already in a low socioeconomic community.”
Fraley was also clear that she and the other Klamath parents weren’t blaming individual bus drivers.
“We are asking the district to respond with urgency and partnership,” she said. “We want to work on improving the real time communications with families — there’s an app, a transportation app, maybe we can get that going so there’s a proper notification system — creating reliable backup transportation plans such as bringing back a bus barn in Klamath so that the bus driver doesn’t have to leave from Crescent city to come down to Klamath to pick up the kids — they could be in the community with us.”
The questionnaire Fraley and Helton created has generated 15 responses so far, Fraley told Redwood Voice Community News on Friday. Its goal is to collect data parents can share with decision makers, Fraley said, adding that they plan to attend the June 4 School Board meeting as well.
At Thursday’s meeting, Andrea Wadsworth told Klamath parents that as a bus driver, she feels like she’s been “on a pile of fire all year long.”
As of an April 29 DNUSD press release, the school district has had nine bus drivers on the road, half of what it had historically. Hoping to get its roster back up to 13 in the near future, DNUSD announced that it was offering a $5,000 signing bonus and “retention incentive” for eligible drivers.
DNUSD also hired an interim director of transportation, Garrett Hatcher, according to DNUSD Communications Director Michael Hawkins.
A bus driver hiring information session is scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday at DNUSD’s 400 W. Harding Avenue facility in Crescent City.
Wadsworth had appeared before the Board of Trustees in March when the local California School Employees Association chapter delivered a no-confidence vote against then-transportation director Christopher Armington.
In a subsequent conversation with Redwood Voice, Wadsworth said routes weren’t being reviewed properly, which led to late buses in other areas of the county, not just Klamath.
On Thursday, Wadsworth said things have improved in the transportation department since that no-confidence vote in March and that they would push “very hard” to hire more drivers.
“We have your guys’s back as much as you guys have ours,” she said, adding that she drives 125 to 180 miles per day from 6 a.m., sometimes, until 5:30-6:30 p.m. due to afterschool programs. “Hopefully next year we’ll start fresh. You guys will be fresh and we’ll have trained bus drivers. The district is really pushing forward for us.”
Former Yurok Tribal Council chairwoman Susan Masten, who represented Klamath on the Board of Supervisors briefly in 2022, urged trustees to come up with a policy that ensures Klamath students are getting to school on time.
If DNUSD can’t do that, she said, its leaders should consider using the transportation dollars it receives to see if the Yurok Tribe would provide that service.
“I want you to recall when you were a teenager, what it was like to walk into a room and you’re late, and the whole class is looking at you,” Masten said. “It’s humiliating. It ruins your whole day. It sets the tone for your whole day and that’s not fair to these students.”
