The application for a bus pickup during the 2024-2025 school year at the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) has been available for a few weeks now.
It’s also available for new, incoming students for the current year. An application is required for every student every, school year.
This is because with 200 routes and 22,000 students, bus stops are annually reevaluated for efficiency, said district Communications Officer Jason Woebkenberg.
“They really are able to maximize just about as many students as we possibly can to minimize that waitlist,” he said. “We've had to start the year with a bus waitlist, but fortunately, we're able to work through that waitlist very rapidly, so that we can try to minimize the number of families that are waiting for transportation.”
That waitlist can be a few hundred deep at the start of the school year and be eliminated in a few weeks.
Woebkenberg said routes change because demand from students and families change. Sometimes students begin driving and taking siblings and neighborhood kids with them, for example.
“We have bus drivers and school buses going all over the city and all over the county,” he said. “So we look at the number of seats available, and we will make it a promise that we will fill every one of those seats, so that we can transport just as many students as possible.”
The application is available on the district website via web form.