By Alyssa Esposito

Staff Writer

The staggered bell schedule for Suffolk Public Schools will not be changed for the upcoming school year, officials announced Thursday.

For the past two school years, Suffolk Public Schools parents and students have struggled with a bus system that often did not get students to school or home on time. The problems started when the school system introduced staggered bell schedules to decrease the number of needed bus drivers.

School officials discussed the issue and outlined how they are responding to a consultant’s recommendations during the School Board’s annual retreat on Thursday at King’s Fork High School.

At the board’s July work session, TransPro Consulting reported numerous deficiencies that were combining to make the buses late: inadequate succession and leadership pay, below-market pay, too few drivers and insufficient training.

Officials went through the recommendations and reported on their progress during Thursday’s retreat.

A partial solution discussed included using police officers and school resource officers to help buses depart from schools more efficiently.

The school system is also in the process of increasing its number of spare buses. The consultant recommended three spares for the general student population and four for the students in the special education program.

Among other recommendations was to purchase buses of the same type in order to cut down on the cost of buying parts for multiple types of buses. Officials also said they would explore with the city the possibility of consolidating garage operations into one location owned and managed by the school system.