Mat-Su School District provides information regarding back to school bus protocols

WASILLA — Students across the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District are back in school. While parents are deciding to do remote, onsite, or hybrid learning with their children, First Student bus drivers are transporting students with COVID-19 protocols in place.

MSBSD public information officer Jillian Morrissey said the current set of practices include mandatory masks, assigned seating, family grouping and notifying families when their children are riding on a high volume route reaching 65 percent capacity or more. Buses will continue to pick up students as scheduled.

“The bus will still run, of course,” Morrissey said. “They’re still going to be picking up students. They just want families to know, so that if they would prefer to find other means of transportation for their child, they can. It’s so that they can make an informed decision.”

Siblings riding the same bus will be encouraged to sit together. Otherwise, bus drivers will attempt to space students to one per seat. Morrissey noted that spacing options will be limited on routes with high volumes of students.

The Mat-Su School District “double buses” in the region, meaning drivers drop off elementary students and turn back around to pick up middle and high school students. Morrissey said that drivers will be sanitizing high contact surfaces between routes.

Morrissey said the district will continue to adapt new bus protocols when needed and notify families of any upcoming changes.

“One thing that we have learned through this experience of living in the global pandemic is that things change. This is the practices and the policies we have right now. As new information comes, we’ll always be considering those things, and informing the public and our families if something changes,” Morrissey said.

For more back to school information within the Mat-Su School District, visit matsuk12.us.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com