Transportation FAQs

Your child should arrive at the stop at least (10) ten minutes before the regular arrival time of the bus. If there is a substitute driver, the times may not be consistent with the regular times. If the bus is late, ask your child to remain at the stop. Buses break down, roads are blocked, drivers become ill or have emergencies, but there will always be a bus at every stop. If the wait becomes extreme (approximately 15 minutes), please call the transportation department at 405-531-9317.

School bus drivers can have the same reasons as motorists for being late. Traffic delays, weather conditions, accidents or driver's illness are just a few reasons. School buses also have mechanical breakdowns or "no starts" that cause delays in picking students up on time. A school bus may be able to run but have a red traffic light malfunction which would make it unsafe to pick up or discharge students on our highways, before it is repaired. In cases where the regularly assigned bus or driver is unable to pick up students, a separate bus and driver are dispatched to pick up the students. Generally, when a bus starts out late on its first or second run, it continues to be late for its third or fourth run also.

School bus sizes are stated in terms of passenger capacity from the manufacturer. All of our full-size buses are rated to hold at least 71 passengers. All seats on a school bus are manufactured 39 inches wide and meant to accommodate 2-3 students. It is our goal to fully utilize all the space on all the buses in our fleet.  If there is not a seat for your child they will not be required to stand or sit in the aisle, another bus will be sent to get them.

Deer Creek School District buses make two to four runs into and out of schools each day. We currently carry approximately 4000 students to school and bring them home daily. On the majority of these runs, Deer Creek buses achieve a load factor of more than 75%. However, we have many special programs that require that students be transported considerable distances. When transporting students to these special programs, the time and length of the run sometimes makes it impossible to fully utilize the capacity of the bus. Often, however, as the bus travels within the school's attendance boundary it will stop and pick up additional students. Examples of these special programs would be:

• Special Needs Programs - Special need runs tend to be light loaded due to the small number of children assigned to centers and the boundaries can be citywide.
• School Boundaries - Some school boundaries cover wide land areas that extend bus runs in miles and time resulting in less than capacity loads.

The Deer Creek regulation provides for transportation for students living in excess of 1.5 miles from school. Regardless of the distance, transportation will be provided if there is no safe walking route within the Parent Transport Zone which is currently .5 miles from each school. School bus stops are typically designed to be within .5 miles from the residence.  You may contact transportation if you feel like there is a problem at 405-531-9317.

Transportation staff familiar with the area and the traffic patterns evaluates the walking routes in consultation with the Traffic Engineering Department and the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department. If you believe an immediate unsafe situation exists, address your concerns to the transportation department at 405-531-9317, otherwise, please email us at transportation@dcsok.org. Please include your students name and address and what you are requesting in the email. If a further evaluation is required, the school system safety officer is consulted.  It takes approximately 3-5 business days to add or move a stop.

Bus stops are placed at centralized locations that can be safely accessed by a significant number of students to minimize the time length and mileage of the run. If you have concerns about your child's safety, you are encouraged to accompany your child to the bus stop or arrange a neighborhood buddy to walk with your child. Bus stops are typically designed to be within .5 miles from the residence. It takes approximately 3-5 business days to add or move a stop.

Initial transportation for special needs children is established by an IEP team at the time of enrollment. Please discuss these programs with a counselor at your child's school site. Transportation will not be arranged until the IEP is complete and it will require 3-5 business days to complete. If you have transportation questions after acceptance into the special needs program, call transportation at 405-531-9317.

Drivers check their buses after every run. Items left by students are held by the driver for one week and may be claimed on the bus by the child. Fragile items are often taken out the buses in the evening for their protection but will be available the next morning. After the driver has failed to locate the owner, unclaimed and unlabeled items are donated to charity. You can help by labeling all of your child's school belongings with the child's name and school.  Please know the number of your child's bus, when inquiring about lost articles.

Deer Creek Public Schools use the conventional style school buses and the smaller Special Needs buses. The Conventional Style school bus is the traditional style with the long forward hood. In terms of bus sizes, there are some 83-passenger buses, 77-passenger buses but mostly 71-passenger conventional buses are the ones that are used to transport students. The smaller buses range in size from 8-passenger to 44-passenger buses.

Several of our buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts. A single wheelchair position requires the same space as two or three bench seats. Therefore, a lift-equipped bus will carry far fewer passengers than its nominal size might indicate.

Most of our buses are diesel-powered. Additionally, all of our buses are equipped with digital radios. All buses have audio, video and student tracking capability.

The basic purpose in spacing school bus seats so closely is to contain the child in a cushioned compartment with only a minimum amount of space between energy-absorbing surfaces.

After extensive research during the 1970's, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determined that the safest and most practical arrangement for school bus seating would be a "compartmentalization" concept. Accordingly, the new safety regulations established in 1977 included this requirement among many other improvements made that year. Under the compartmentalization concept, seat backs in school buses are made higher, wider and thicker than before. All metal surfaces are covered with foam padding. This structure must then pass rigid test requirements for absorbing energy, such as would be required if a child's body were thrown against the padded back. In addition, the equivalent of a seat back, called a "barrier," is placed in front of the first seat at the front of the bus.

In addition to padding, today's seats also must have a steel inner structure that springs and bends forward to help absorb energy when a child is thrown against it. The steel frame must "give" just enough to absorb the child in the seat ahead. Also, of course, the seat is required to be anchored to the floor so strongly it will not pull loose during this bending action. The floor itself must be so strong that it will not be bent or torn by the pulling action of the seat anchors.

Finally, the requirement is added that seat backs can be no farther apart than a distance that is deemed safe. Clearly, if the backs were too far apart, the child could be thrown too far before being cushioned and/or could be thrown outside the compartment altogether. Today's rules call for a seat back to be no farther than 24" away from a defined point in the middle of a child's abdomen (the seat reference point).

Seat belts are not required in school buses because research by the DOT and others determined that compartmentalization was a better solution, as mentioned under the previous question. Some of the key arguments favoring compartmentalization over seat belts are as follows:

• Compartmentalization is more manageable. The protective surfaces exist in place without depending on any action by the children or any extra special supervision by the drivers. Seat belts require discipline and supervision to keep them clean, unraveled and in use. 
• Compartmentalization works equally well for 1, 2 or 3 students per seat. Today's 39" wide standard seats may contain three small children or two large ones, or any combination in between. Arranging seat belts to properly handle any combination is difficult, if not impossible; the best-known solution with seat belts is to restrict each seat to two students and two belts, which has the disadvantage of sharply reducing the carrying capacity of bus fleets.
• Compartmentalization works whether students have fully developed abdominal areas or not. Conventional seat belts, which are lap restraints only, are not suitable for small children whose abdominal area and bone structure are not adequately developed to take the force of a lap belt alone. They need the help of chest harnesses also, which adds to the complexity of a proper seat belt solution.
• Compartmentalization, once it has done its energy-absorbing job, leaves the student free to escape the bus. Seat belts could leave students strapped in, upside down, perhaps unconscious, in burning or flooding buses.
• Compartmentalization is most affordable. Although not a part of the DOT reasoning, this is a factor to be considered. In evaluating the cost of seat belts alone, one should include the cost of retractors and chest restraints also, since those appear needed. Even more important is the probability that a seat belt solution should lead to two students per seat and greater spacing between seats, thereby requiring more buses for the same student load.

The rated capacity of a 39" width passenger seat was devised many years ago by the committee then making recommendations to the National Minimum Standards for School buses. In determining seating capacity of a bus, an allowable average student width standard was established.

Accordingly, 13" of student width was suggested when a 3 - 3 seating plan was used. This suggested guideline is still recognized by most states as the accepted approach. It is not a federally mandated requirement.

The priority is to provide transportation to and from school. The school bus fleet does not contain a separate set of buses designated for field trip use. Therefore, whenever school buses are not in use for normal to and from school transportation, they are available for field trip use. For planning purposes, school buses are available on school days from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and again after 5:00 p.m. Occasionally in the Spring, the demand for field trips can outnumber the drivers and buses available. Transportation staff and requesters of field trips discuss individual circumstances.

 In order to maximize the use of our school bus fleet and to provide a more efficient operation with as few buses as possible, schools are put into one of two distinctly different time schedules. This enables one bus to serve different schools within 2 1/2 hours in the morning and afternoon. 4th-6th grades are in the 1st time schedule, High school and middle school are in the 2nd time schedule and elementary schools are in the 3rd time schedule. Typical school time schedules are:

• High School - 8:15 a.m. - 3:10 p.m.
• Middle School - 8:15 a.m. - 3:10 p.m.
• Intermediate School - 7:30 a.m. - 2:20 p.m.
• 4/5 Grade Center - 7:30 a.m. - 2:20 p.m.
• Elementary School - 8:55 a.m. - 3:45 p.m.
• Pre-K - 8:35 a.m. – 3:25 p.m.

Buses operate throughout the day with shuttles, field trips, in addition to the normal to-and-from school transportation requirements. In order to have the required number of operational buses each day, a group of backup or spare buses must be retained. By state regulation, school buses are required to be serviced and inspected yearly. When a bus is in for service, a spare bus is required to continue its run without interruption. Furthermore, when a bus has mechanical problems or damage from accident or vandalism that require it to be out of service, a spare bus is needed to perform the duties of the out-of-service bus. Often, this can be for an extended period of time, especially in the case of accident repairs.

Spare buses are also used during the year to augment the operating fleet when new student transportation requirements necessitate that the daily operating fleet be increased. Because of delays created by the budget, procurement, and production processes, it can take from nine months to a year for additional new buses to arrive. During that time, the spare buses are used to satisfy the requirement.

All vehicles with a factory-designed seating capacity of 11 or more passengers including the driver, and whose use includes the transportation of students to and from school or related events meet the “school bus” definition and must comply with all Federal Motor Vehicle Safety applicable to school buses. 

The child's parent or guardian must request permission from Transportation by noon for a child to ride a different bus for childcare purposes.  An email must be sent to transportation@dcsok.org.  Parents may not give permission for a student to ride home with their child; it must be the parent or guardian of the child.

All bus stops are evaluated prior to school starting for ideal placement.  Deer Creek School District requires all gated HOA areas to have the gates opened for the school bus to enter and exit. If the gated HOA area will not open the gates, the bus will stop outside the gates and load/unload there. Due to safety/liability concerns, we will not accept a clicker or code to enter the gates and cannot allow students to exit the bus to activate clickers or codes. It is recommended all gates be open from 6:15 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. and from 2:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.

If a student reports that they have lost their badge they must purchase a new badge for $10 from My School Bucks. Please note: the school office staff will notify transportation when the new badge is requested and a new badge will be issued and sent to the school for the student. This process can take from 1-3 days depending on when the badge is paid for, however, once the badge is paid for the student will be allowed to ride the bus again.

All badge purchases are checked at approximately 7:30 a.m. each morning. If you purchased a badge after this time it will not be accounted for until the next day.

Deer Creek Transportation does not control the app for student tracking. If you are randomly having a problem we would suggest restarting your phone/app. If you are having trouble finding your student in the app please contact transportation at transportation@dcsok.org.