SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Timothy Ross is dropped off at his stop a half an hour late Thursday afternoon. Because of bus delays, the 13-year-old has been late to school all week.

A surge in the number of school choice transfer requests may be a major factor fueling public school bus delays this week in Roanoke.

Six times as many city students compared with last year sought transfers because their assigned school did not meet federal benchmarks -- and many of the changes were made in the final days leading up to the start of the school year.

The volume of transfers coupled with the division's sweeping overhaul of attendance zones have contributed to the significant delays in both the first three days of school and the inaugural week of operating a privatized bus system. Roanoke became the first school system in Virginia to outsource the busing of students to and from school when it hired Mountain Valley Transportation.

A representative from Mountain Valley's parent company, Pennsylvania-based Krapf Bus Cos., said the bumps in the road are nothing more than standard start-of-the-year kinks that are expected to be worked out within a week.

Some parents are beginning to run out of patience.

The city school division is required to offer transfer options to students in five schools that did not make Adequate Yearly Progress for two consecutive years. Those schools are Huff Lane Intermediate, Hurt Park Elementary, Lucy Addison Middle, Round Hill Montessori Primary and Westside Elementary.

Only 61 students took school choice transfers last school year compared with 377 students this year. The highest number of transfers from one school came from Lucy Addison Middle, where 118 students exercised school choice. School officials were unable to confirm it, but the high number of transfers there may have also been influenced by the redrawn attendance boundaries and the permanent closure of William Ruffner Middle School.

"Our goal is to implement changes, which include revised routes, by Monday that will hopefully resolve many of the transportation issues we have encountered so far," said Andre Harris, Mountain Valley's general manager.

Harris said he appreciates parents' patience while the routes are finalized.

Still, frustration is building. Rebekah Ross said her 13-year-old son has been at least an hour late to Woodrow Wilson Middle School all week. She spoke to the bus driver, who told her he has only 10 minutes between the end of his route at Highland Park Elementary in Old Southwest and the start of his next route, which begins at Florida and Golfside avenues in Northwest Roanoke.

That's not enough time, Ross said.

She baby-sits small children in her home and is not available to shuttle her son when the buses are late. A neighbor offered her son a ride but, "I'm too stubborn for that," Ross said. Instead she spent half an hour holding on the phone line to speak to someone at Mountain Valley.

The Roanoke School Board last spring narrowly approved the proposal to outsource transportation. Mountain Valley bought the city's aging fleet and agreed to purchase at least 15 new school buses annually. The move is expected to save the school system an estimated $250,000 a year and to guarantee students will ride on newer, safer buses, which the cash-strapped division may not have been able to afford.

In Roanoke County, where the school year started about three weeks ago, school spokesman Chuck Lionberger said the transportation department has received very few calls or complaints about buses arriving late. He also cautioned against comparing the city and county bus lines.

"We're very different transportation systems," Lionberger wrote in an e-mail. "The city has a much more urban system, while we're more rural."