The Roanoke Times | File

Delays and other glitches have left some Roanoke parents wondering if outsourcing was a mistake.

After four days of hourlong school bus delays in Roanoke and an arduous weekend revamp of bus routes, Mountain Valley Transportation officials sent the city school buses on a new course Monday.

Plan B was designed to keep buses from duplicating paths within attendance zones, part of a wider effort to get more students to school on time after a chaotic first week of late buses and tardy students under privatized transportation.

Special morning routes were eliminated for the gifted curriculums at Fairview and Highland Park elementary schools and the 377 students who made last-minute school choice transfers. Students on Monday first went to the school they were zoned to attend and then were shuttled to the appropriate school.

Several school board members said they are not ready to give up on Mountain Valley, despite the troubles of week one.

"I am in no way ready to say the transition to outsourcing is not working out," school board member Todd Putney said. "But the first week was not acceptable to have this many problems."

Delays, glitches and the lack of answers have left some parents, such as Venita Jones, wondering if outsourcing was a mistake.

Jones, a Southwest Roanoke mother of three schoolchildren, said the revised routes are worse for her daughters. Their bus ride to Highland Park already was long, but five more stops were added Monday. Kenisha, 5, and Lakeesha, 8, boarded the bus 10 minutes earlier -- at 6:25 a.m., which is one hour and 20 minutes before school starts.

The afternoon route did not change, but Jones still had problems Monday. School lets out at 2:25 p.m., but by about 4 p.m. the girls were not home.

Jones called Mountain Valley and no one answered. She phoned the central school office and was told the bus could not be located. Frustrated, all she could do was wait. The girls arrived home about 20 minutes later; the bus had been in a minor accident. In the meantime, Jones' son, who attends a middle school that lets outs at 3:30 p.m., beat the girls home.

Jones' family lives in the Hurt Park Elementary School attendance zone, but that school did not make Adequate Yearly Progress against federal benchmarks. So she opted to send her children to a better-performing school, a choice school divisions are required to offer under the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Citywide, there was a surge this year in students who took advantage of school choice transfers. Last school year, 61 students transferred because of school choice, compared with 377 this year. That is what school and transportation officials say is the culprit driving delays.

Three major changes hit bus routes with last week's start of school: a newly privatized bus system, redrawn attendance boundaries and the influx of students who took advantage of school choice. Any one of those by itself was a significant change, but all three combined created more confusion.

Afternoon, middle school and high school routes did not change with the weekend revision. Curt Baker, the school system's deputy superintendent for operations, said most middle and high school routes were late last week because of complications with the earlier elementary routes. Ironing out those problems should remedy the later routes, he said.

Parents with transportation-related questions should call Mountain Valley Transportation at 777-0101. Revised bus routes are posted online at rcps.info.