All the busses in the shuttle system meet behind Columbus Square Mall to exchange students.  Students are held on their incoming bus until all the  busses have arrived; then the exchange is made.  Students are under supervision at all times.  There is a supervisor and/or a police officer on duty at each shuttle exchange, morning and afternoon.

Students can not be dropped off or picked up by car at the shuttle point, nor can they walk in from the surrounding neighborhoods.  This is a security issue and is strictly enforced.  All students arrive and depart the shuttle point by school bus only.  If parents insist on picking up or dropping off their children at the shuttle points, bus transportation will be forfeited for the rest of the school year.

Magnet and shuttle routes are set up each year based on the requests received by our summer deadline in mid July.  A great deal of preparation is required for these routes, because there are over 2500 students in these programs and they can only be assigned busses by the Transportation Office.  Any requests received after the deadline will be handled as soon as possible, but parents should be prepared to transport their students for the first three weeks of school.

Requests received after school has started will be handled as soon as possible.  If there is not a stop available, a new stop will be created to begin the next six weeks.  Parents will have to provide their own transportation until the update takes place.  This is done to keep the route times as stable as possible, so the students already on the busses have a minimum of disruption in their service.

If a student misses five consecutive days at his stop, and he is the only one at that stop, the stop will be discontinued and the parent will have to call Transportation to reinstate it.  If dropping an inactive stop takes the bus out of that area, then the stop cannot be added back until the next six-weeks update.  However, if parents will notify the driver or our office in advance that the student will be absent for several days, we can make accommodations.