Bridge City ISD safely transports 1,100 students on 14 routes to and from school daily. Over the last few years there have been a few challenges faced by our transportation services department. These challenges include: the number of drivers needed to cover all routes on a daily basis, a steady increase in the number of students who ride the bus to and from school daily, and an increase in the time each route takes to complete.
In the 2023-2024 school year (and the next few years), we will have the added traffic due to the Chevron Phillips project on Texas Avenue for our high school students and staff to contend with. Due to shift change traffic added to the already high volume of traffic in front of the high school in the afternoon, allowing our staff and teen drivers to get home before the rush hour is the safest course of action.
As a result of these challenges and in the interest of student safety, the district completed a detailed transportation study. It was determined that moving forward to the 2023-2024 school year, Bridge City ISD will need to move from a two-tier route system to a three-tier route system. The three-tier system will ensure all of the routes we have will be covered by our current full-time drivers. This change will also reduce the number of students on each bus, group similar-aged students together, and spread our students more evenly over the three tiers, which will allow for a safer transportation environment. Under our current two-tier system, we have elementary and intermediate students on one tier and middle school and high school students on a second tier. Elementary and intermediate students make up approximately two-thirds of our daily bus riders. With this three tier system, elementary will be one tier, intermediate will be a second tier, and middle school and high school combined will be a third tier. With this change it is necessary to adjust our instructional start and end times. Below will be the instructional start and end times for the 2023-2024 school year.
2023-2024 Bell Schedule:
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Tier 1-Middle and High School 7:15 AM -2:45 PM
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Tier 2-Elementary 7:55 AM-3:25 PM
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Tier 3-Intermediate 8:35 AM-4:05 PM
We recognize that this is a significant change for our staff and community. Thank you in advance for understanding the need to make changes as we continue to provide the quality services and instruction for our growing population. We will continue to explore ways to make this transition as smooth as possible. Detailed information such as bus routes, stops, pick up and drop off times, and school opening times are being finalized now and will be communicated soon.
Thank you for your continued support.
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