'An F for bus service.' Some Wake students wait hours to return home because of busing delays

"We are so excited to have almost a full school of students here today, " said Alison Cleveland, principal of Wakefield Middle School. "This has been a year and a half in the making."

A mass of mask-wearing students arrived at schools across Wake County for the start of the new year.

"This year will be different, because it’s a whole new level of making kids feel comfortable and build a community even from behind a mask," said Catherine Delaney, a Wakefield Middle School teacher.

More than 90% of students are learning in-person this year — the most since before the pandemic.

The first day of classes didn't come without any hiccups. Parents across the county reported that buses were an hour to two hours late in picking up and dropping off their children.

Lisa Luten, spokeswoman with the Wake County Public School System, said buses usually run late the first week of school because "kids are still learning how to board the bus safely."

The bus delays are to be expected, she said, and should improve after one week.

But parents are still concerned over the delays. Chris and Lora Addair said it took their daughter Hannah three hours to get home from Swift Creek Elementary School in Raleigh on Monday.

"It just got worse," said Lora Addair. "I started getting frantic. I was like, 'Should I call the police?'"

The Addairs said they felt helpless. They said Hannah waited two hours to board the bus before it took another hour to get home.

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"We were worried about Hannah and her well-being," said Chris Addair.

Parents across the school district spent the afternoon refreshing the district's bus tracking app.

"I knew it was going to be a crazy show," said parent Cori Silker.

Silker said she called Forest Pines Elementary School after more than an hour of waiting for her son to get home.

"You could just hear the scrambling in the background - like walkie-talkies going off, like 'We've got green bus. Let's get these kids on the bus,'" described Silker.

A spokesman said the district is planning to have 627 school bus routes, with more than half being shared runs -- meaning the same bus transports two different groups of students to school in the morning at different times or collects two different groups of students from school in the afternoon at different times.

So far this month, the school system already has reported more than 470 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases in schools with year-round classes. The majority of those cases are among students, not staff.

Six clusters have been reported since Aug. 1. The most recent cluster was reported Friday at Holly Grove Elementary, where six students tested positive.

Nearly 17,000 COVID-19 cases were reported in North Carolina over the weekend, and more than 3,000 people across the state are currently hospitalized.

"Everybody has a certain level of worry right now and anticipation about what’s going to happen," Cleveland said. "We are keeping the students’ safety at the first priority.

Face masks are required inside all Wake County public schools, and social distancing depends on how much space each school has.

At the new elementary, Cohn Magnet School, in Raleigh, teachers are using indoor and outdoor spaces to allow for learning with room to spread out.

"We want to make sure our students feel that school collaborative environment but also maintain the health and safety of them as well," Cleveland said.

Wake superintendent: Virtual Academy is at capacity, 90% of students in classrooms