Winter weather hit a little earlier than many officials expected Friday in St. Joseph which caused many problems with transporting students home.

Shawn Woods, Operations Manager with Apple Bus said the last students in the St. Joseph School District made it home around 10:15 Friday evening.  He said no one was injured even though bus drivers got into several difficult situations with the slick roads.

“The out pour of compassion Friday evening was outstanding.  We had many stories of drivers who were stranded with students on their bus.  Neighbors brought bottles of water, hot chocolate, various snacks and cookies to the drivers and their students,” Woods said. “Given the conditions and the icy roadways the skill that our drivers across the board showed was exemplary.”

Dr. Solon Haynes, Dir. of Student Services for the St. Joseph School District said it takes about an hour to implement an early out.

“It would have been after 2 before we could even have gotten the buses to school and our first school lets out at 2:50 so about 2:30 the buses are already leaving the bus lot to get to school,” Haynes said. “We monitored the weather all morning and watching radar that didn’t even really show up on the radar.  There wasn’t a real high chance of precipitation with that freezing rain. By the time it hit it just seemed like it hit just really quickly and the intensity of it that put the ice glaze all over the roads.  The only thing we could have done differently is probably we would have had to let out early that morning, well it wasn’t doing anything early that morning.”

Woods said the weather moved in earlier than anticipated.

“The forecast showed the weather moving in at 5 o’clock when we would have been done on a normal day,” Woods said. “It caught us right at the time when we were going out on our afternoon routes. So it was really crunch time.  It was the perfect storm of situations and I think all-in-all our driver’s handled it like the professionals that they are.”

Haynes said around eight Apple buses were reviewed for damage after Friday, also three special education buses for the district were in crashes and were also damaged.

“They had about eight buses that were in accidents that they either needed to repair or check before they would safely be able to be on the road.  That means probably that they have some mirrors or lights that were damaged or windows that were broken out,” Haynes said. “We didn’t have any injuries and all the students made it home safely.”

Getting buses to the schools to pick up students was a challenge from the beginning.  Three out of around 63 buses didn’t even make it to pick up kids.

“Overall I’m proud of the way our drivers handled the situation,” Woods said. “I’d like to thank the school district.  The principals, the staff, at each of the 23 schools in St. Joe.  They did an outstanding job of looking out for the students. Many of them stayed late into the night as well.  We had one school had five teachers that road around with the bus route and they didn’t get back until after 10.  The street department for St. Joe, First Responders, Fire Department, Police Department all assisted us in different ways.”

“Our staff in our schools, especially our elementaries really went above and beyond.  They made sure the kids had food. while they were waiting for the buses or their parents they were either playing games or watching movies,” Haynes said. “They really went above and beyond to make sure our kids were safe and taken care of and got home.”

Woods is asking community members to thank a bus driver if they see them for their efforts in getting kids home safely.

Due to road conditions and the condition of buses the St. Joseph School District canceled classes for Monday and Tuesday.  Solon said Monday the district is reviewing the situation to see if there’s anything that could have been done better.

“We’re doing a debrief,” Haynes said. “With the bus company and everybody involved so we can go through and see what we can do better.  What can we learn to make any incident like we had on Friday maybe make it less of an impact on students and the families in the district.”