Sandra Chapman/Eyewitness News
Indianapolis - Some 31,000 students in the state's largest school district got the day off from school, but it wasn't planned. Was it a case of the "horse-shoe flu" or something worse?
"Had the drivers showed up for work it would not have been a problem. We would have had school today," said Mary Louise Bewley, IPS spokesperson.
The IPS bus fleet got an earlier jolt on Monday morning after sitting idle over the weekend in sub-zero temperatures. While neighboring townships called for a two-hour school delay, the IPS plan called for classes as scheduled. But two hours after the buses began warming, school was cancelled. Too many bus drivers scheduled to report at 5:00 am failed to show up.
"We had so many bus drivers that were calling off work that we would have had to double up bus routes and with the temperatures being as low as they were we did not want to have children standing for extra long periods of time out on the bus stops," said Bewley.
IPS employs 500 bus drivers, some under contract with the First Student Transportation Company, others employees of the district. Bewley says the missing drivers came from both pools. The district plans to follow up on this sudden rash of sickness.
"I'm sure our Director of Transportation will be having that conversation again, that children come first in our district and that they really need to remember why they have the job. The job is to serve children," Bewley said. "It's extremely important for our students because we do know in IPS that for many of our children this is where they come to get two meals a day."
IPS tried to alert parents to the closing using its "Connect-Ed" automated phone system. Like most districts, IPS has one built-in snow day in the school calendar. That means any additional snow days might require make up days in the summer.
As of 3:30 pm, IPS had not revealed the actual number of drivers that called in sick. Drivers who reported to work were sent home while others tell Eyewitness News they called in and were told by garage supervisors school was cancelled.
