AUSTINTOWN — The Austintown Local School District is making some changes to student transportation and communication for the upcoming school year.

The district has condensed its busing routes for grades 6-12 and implemented a new cellphone policy for the high school.

The busing changes will see middle school and high school students, who ride together, catching their buses at slightly different locations.

“It started to really affect us this last year, with the bus driver decline,” said Superintendent Tim Kelty. “My job is to stay one step ahead, and I knew we had some retirements coming and were behind the eight-ball.”

Kelty held a job fair for bus drivers, which by all accounts was successful.

Transportation director Angie Mraz said the district was able to hire enough drivers to replace those who retired, and has a few extras in training as well.

Austintown has 26 regular buses that each run middle-school / high-school routes, intermediate school routes and elementary school routes.

Last year, with Austintown down to 32 drivers — from the 42 to 45 Kelty said are necessary to provide proper transportation for the 1,900 to 2,000 students who ride buses — the district saw delays that left students and parents frustrated.

Kelty said that was because they had to add streets and stops to drivers’ regular routes.

The middle-school / high-school routes are run first, and Kelty said their drivers would end up about 20 minutes late returning from those to run the intermediate routes, which then compounded and left them about 40 minutes behind for the elementary routes.

This year, he said stops on busy streets like Raccoon, New and Kirk roads will remain the same as they have been. But in more residential neighborhoods, like Wickliffe for example, the stops will either be at the ends of the streets or in the middle to minimize the amount of time drivers spend on each road.

“I did not want to stop busing altogether or get an outside busing service,” Kelty said. “I’m proud of the services that have come to be expected for our community and I’m going to continue to fight the good fight to maintain that.”

CELL PHONES DOWN

When high school students arrive at Fitch this year, they will have to work within the confines of a new phone policy.

Principal Sal Maiorana said the rules are pretty simple: if students are in class, phones are to be turned off and put away in pockets or backpacks.

Students may use their phones at lunch, in the hallways between classes, and even in study hall.

The policy is in line with new standards set by Gov. Mike DeWine, but considerably different from districts like Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron, which have spent thousands of dollars on Yondr pouches that secure phones so that students cannot access them during the school day.

“We’re trying to teach them responsible use. They’re going to graduate in a few years and go into the real world,” Maiorana said. “We want to lean away from severe consequences and teach them when it is appropriate to use it and when not to. Are those kids going to have those pouches on a job interview or at college or at work?”

Maiorana said the school is also giving teachers autonomy on how to enforce the policy. Some may require students to leave their phones at the door, and also have discretion about how to penalize students for violations and when to refer egregious or repeat violators to administration.

Kelty said the middle school’s no phones policy is unchanged. Students may bring phones to school but must leave them in their lockers at all times.

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