SLSD Announces Transportation Update

To access your child's bus information, log into your Final Forms account.

(Harrison, Oh.) - The Southwest Local School District made an announcement surrounding the transportation plan for all schools on Friday.

The announcement reads: 

On August 28, our district pushed out preliminary bus routes, times, and pick-up locations to our families via Final Forms.  Please log into your Final Forms account via the Online Forms portion of the Abre Parent/Student Portal.  You will click on your student’s name, go to “Forms”, and click on the “Transportation Information” tab in order to view your child’s bus information.  Obviously, there are a number of families impacted by the reduction in services to state minimum transportation which eliminated transportation within two miles as well as commercial daycares and transfers.  We have been able to give some of this back to families at some schools, but many are still at a loss.   We will continue to work on bringing transportation back to those impacted in the coming weeks and months, which may result in changes to time/routes in the future. 

Each child that has bus transportation with Southwest has been placed on a seating chart in accordance with Ohio Department of Health and Pupil Transportation Task Force recommendations.   If your child(ren) will not be riding the bus this year, please let us know so that we can free up those seats on our seating chart for another student who may depend on this service.  We want to THANK all of those who have already volunteered to transport their children to and from school to free up those valuable spots.  Those who are transporting students themselves will have no information in the Final Forms transportation fields.  To make any changes to transportation (or remove bus transportation to free up a seat), please complete a School Bus Transportation Request Form and return it to your school or district office (now located at Harrison High School).  Do not attempt to make changes to this form online in Final Forms at this time.

At this time, thermometers are allowed on the school bus but are not permitted to be used by our school bus drivers.  For that reason, we will no longer be taking temperatures on the school bus at each stop in the mornings.  Parents are required to take student temperatures before their child(ren) leave the house for the bus each morning.  Students will also have their temperatures taken and screening questions asked at a separate entrance at each school upon arrival.  Parents are no longer mandated to be at bus stops in the morning, though it is still recommended to help with social distancing and mask enforcement at each stop. 

As more students continue to enroll with our district, and routes need to be adjusted to accommodate the addition of students to each route, there may be some changes to the current bus routes and times.  This will be especially prevalent with midday routes, as Kindergartners make up about 100 of the 200+ students that have started the registration process, but have not completed it at this time (and thus are not scheduled on routes yet).  We will push out an update to transportation information via Final Forms the week before school starts.  Please log into Final Forms again at some point the weekend before school starts in order to view this latest information.  As always, there are typically some delays the first week of school as drivers learn routes, names, etc.  This will be true again this year – especially considering drivers need to ask students for their names and inform them of their seat assignments as they load each morning until students can remember where they sit.  Additional sanitation will be taking place as well.

Have a great start to the school year!

- SLSD Transportation