Parents complain after Wake school bus stop switched without notice

Students from Knightdale who attend Moore Square Magnet Middle School and Southeast Magnet Raleigh High School take an express bus that picks them up from and drops them off at a central location instead of at several stops in neighborhoods.

On Thursday afternoon, the school district switched drop-off location from Hodge Road Elementary School to the community pool in the Planters Walk subdivision in Knightdale. School district spokeswoman Lisa Luten said Hodge Road Elementary wasn't a good bus stop because the magnet school students were being dropped off at about the same time as the elementary school students were being dismissed, leading to traffic tie-ups.

Magnet school students received a letter Thursday morning when they got on the school bus to inform them of the change, but some of the students don't ride the morning bus, so they never received the notice. Even parents with children on the morning bus were upset that they received virtually no notice of the change.

"They dropped the ball. There is no question about it," parent Skye Creech said. "There should have been an email, a phone call – something – and give us a little bit of notice instead of the day before or day of."

Creech said his son had to use another student's cellphone to call him Thursday afternoon to inform him of the change.

"They should have told us two weeks in advance," parent Jonty Constant said. "They told us this at the last minute, so I am just totally upset about this."

Luten said the letter announcing the change was issued Wednesday and couldn't explain why students didn't get it until the following day. The bus still stopped at Hodge Road Elementary on Thursday afternoon just in case parents didn't get the news, she said, adding that district officials will review how the change was communicated.