LARGO, Fla. — Some Pinellas County parents are fed up with late school buses and say they’d hoped the district had corrected issues from last school year. 

Over the summer, the district made several changes to routes for this school year, and raised the pay for drivers in an effort to help with shortages, but one parent says it’s like déjà vu — the buses are still late.

Erin Gatlin’s son, Remy, spends a lot of time standing at this corner, dark and early, waiting.

“Not every day, but most days, it’s at least 5-10 minutes behind, and some days it can be 20-30 even more minutes. It’s troublesome because you miss some class time,” said Remy Despointes, a freshman at Pinellas Park High School.

He says he can handle the days that it’s only a few minutes late, but recently, Gatlin says she’s spending a lot more time waiting on texts from “The Bus Bulletin.”

“It will tell you exactly how long their running late,” she said as she pulled up some of the recent texts she received, one from Wednesday saying the bus would be up to 30 minutes delayed, and that’s not all.

Pinellas County Schools issued a statement saying this particular bus had been late by 15 minutes or more two times since the beginning of September.  It went on to say that since implementing new strategies this school year, it has significantly increased efficiency. (Roger Johnson/Spectrum Bay News 9)

“This is in September, delayed up to 45 minutes, I believe that day it was over an hour and then there were days in between that for some reason I just did not get a message," she said.

Gatlin says for them, this brings back bad memories from last year when Remy was still in middle school, and they’d hoped this year would be different.

“When you contact transportation, I was given a poor guy that sits there and answers the phone for all the parents and all he can tell you is that they don’t really have control, the buses are running late, there’s not enough drivers and that’s pretty much all they can tell you,” she said.

For now, Remy is practicing patience, and his mother says she hopes the district solves this problem once and for all.

“I can’t imagine being a bus driver, that’s a stressful job and for what they get paid," she said. "I know they’ve tried to make changes with changing the location of the stops and things like that but it doesn’t seem like it’s helped all that much.”

Pinellas County Schools issued a statement saying this particular bus had been late by 15 minutes or more two times since the beginning of September.  It went on to say that since implementing new strategies this school year, it has significantly increased efficiency.