After closing the entire previous week while Tropical Storm Debby passed through, Bulloch County Schools reopened Monday, Aug. 12, with school buses transporting students. But as of Thursday, the buses were still staying off the county’s hundreds of miles of dirt roads.

With an estimated average six inches of dirt washed off the top of those roads, and some road sections much more deeply and irregularly scoured, the county’s Public Safety and Public Works division leaders declined to assure the school superintendent last weekend that the roads were safe.

“I also made the statement that at that point I had no confidence in giving them an idea that the dirt roads were safe for travel for bus traffic, and we still take that stance,” Public Works Director Dink Butler told the county commissioners Monday evening. “ We  don’t feel  comfortable  giving them a green light for bus travel on these dirt roads. We are that concerned about the condition of our roads overall.”

That was during the Board of Commissioners’ rescheduled Aug.  12 “regular” meeting, postponed from Aug. 6 just for business contract and purchase actions, followed by a report on the Tropical Storm Debby response and recovery.

After that update, the commissioners by a 6-0 vote reappropriated up to $5 million for a “rapid response plan” for road repairs proposed by Butler and County Manager Tom Couch. Drawing the first 75%, or $3.75 million   from Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax and the remainder from the county’s general fund balance, the county staff hopes to hire several earthmoving contractor firms to do much of the work.

That “rapid response” is expected to take 90 to 120 days to bring all the dirt roads back up to pre-storm conditions, Butler said, an improvement on his estimate of a year or more if county Public Works crews alone did the work.

But that doesn’t answer whether the school buses will be able to return to some of the dirt roads in the near future.

“We can still not go down any dirt roads whatsoever,” Hayley Greene, the Bulloch County Schools public relations director, said Thursday. “Even if they’re open to car traffic, and have been reopened, that does not mean that a bus can go down them. Until Public Safety gives the all-clear, we will not go down any dirt roads.”

As of Thursday afternoon, school system officials had received no further information from those agencies about any of the unpaved roads being restored for school bus travel “or whether they will open them gradually or all at once,” she said.

So, in addition to making their regular stops on streets and paved roads, Bulloch County Schools bus drivers are making alternate stops, such as at locations where students from homes on dirt roads board a bus at the nearest paved road.

“Yes, we will use those alternate bus stops that we have set up, and we will use those for the foreseeable future,” Greene said.

Not only the dirt roads, but some issues with washouts and bridge closings on a few paved roads, have presented a challenge, she noted.

“However, we know a great deal of effort is being made by public works and the National Guard to repair Bulloch County's roadways,” Greene had stated in a Wednesday email.

Approximately 250 National Guardsmen, many from the Georgia Army National Guard’s 177th Engineer Battalion based in Statesboro, were deployed with equipment on Bulloch County’s roads last week to help with initial cleanup and repairs.

Delays expected

In guidelines communicated to students’ families, the school district has emphasized safety and acknowledged that buses were likely to run late. One of the messages follows.

“Safety First: Due to expected delays and safety, we ask parents to please stay with your children until the bus arrives in the morning. For those with temporary alternate bus stops, please bring your child to the stop, don’t let them walk along roadways, and try to be on time when the bus brings them back to the alternate stop in the afternoon to help prevent delays. Children who are not picked up at their alternate bus stop will be returned to the school, and we will contact you. Safety is our priority!”

Also, the school nutrition service has been making arrangements so that children who arrive at school late on buses can still have breakfast.

Driver shortage

Because of a perennial shortage of school bus drivers, some delays were already occurring in the first two days of school, Aug. 1 and 2, before Tropical Storm Debby.

“Double routing, even triple routing has been our norm for several years now due to bus driver shortage. There’s a nationwide shortage,” Greene said.

The Bulloch County district remains, consistently, 10 to 12 bus drivers short of the number the system could use, with about 100 routes, she said.

On another storm-related concern, school district officials had yet to decide how many of the five cancelled class days will need to be made up later, or when. The 2024-2025 school calendar lists just two potential weather make-up days fall semester, Oct. 14-15, and two potential makeup days spring semester, April 7-8.

Superintendent Charles Wilson, School Improvement Assistant Superintendent Teresa Phillips and board members are having conversations about this decision, Greene said.

Road condition map

Meanwhile, residents who want to see the overall condition of Bulloch County’s roads and the latest available information on individual roads and problem points can look to a web-based map pulled together by the county government’s Public Safety and Public Works divisions and Geographic Information Systems office.

The map has a lengthy address on its own, but county commissioners Communications Director Dal Cannady notes that it’s easy to find by first going to the county website, bullochcounty.net, and clicking the “Road Status” box on the home page.

On a black background, the map shows Bulloch’s roads as a network of colored lines overlaid with a dense shotgun pattern of colored dots. Both road lines and location dots are color-coded. A green line means a road is open and passable. If represented by a pale yellow line, a road is “open – passable with caution.” A road drawn in orange is “possibly closed” with “moderate damage.” A red road is closed, with “severe damage.” A road drawn as a pale gray line has yet “to be evaluated.”

The dots represent road repair points, with orange for “scoured,” red for “cut,” pink for “undermined” and gray for “other.” Clicking on a dot opens a little info box, sometimes with separate notes for road surface and shoulder, and often with an attached photo from the scene.

Click here to view the map.