Dear APS families, 

Since our return to school from winter break last week, our transportation company, Trombly, has experienced staffing challenges each day due to the increase in COVID-19 cases. This has made it difficult for their operations and for buses to run on-time in the morning and afternoon routes. 

Cold weather also affects Trombly’s diesel bus engines, which take longer to warm up and may make them run slower. The weather forecast for Tuesday, January 11^th calls for extreme cold temperatures. As a result, we encourage our families who have the ability to do so, to transport their children to/from school tomorrow or for families to consider carpooling. This would include our student walkers. As a reminder, elementary school drop off is at 8:45A, middle schools are at 8:05A, high school drop off is at 7:45A. We have been in contact with schools, and students will not be marked late due to delayed arrival. 

Should APS’s transportation manager receive updates on specific bus routes this evening or tomorrow morning from Trombly, she will share this information with these families as soon as possible. 

While we recognize this is not an ideal request, we would prefer to communicate as much information as is available to us for our families to be able to prepare in advance. As we have learned, bus service this school year has not been reliable (a problem compounded by an increase in driver absences due to COVID), and we do not want our students waiting in extreme conditions. 

Thank you.

Dr. Magda Parvey

Superintendent