Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Superintendent Dr. Rodney Trice issued a formal apology to families on Tuesday over unassigned bus routes and unannounced walk-zone enforcement that upended the first week of classes for some students. Trice promised that families who verify their information in Infinite Campus by Thursday will receive updated bus assignments no later than September 3.
The apology came after days of frustration for parents like Jackie Woodside, who said her sixth grader did not have an assigned bus and told ABC11 News she waited by the phone until she knew her child had actually gotten on the bus in the afternoon. Another parent, Jordan Dickens, said her child was nervous about starting high school and that the family was worried about whether she could even get to school. CHCCS spokesman Andy Jenks told the station the district is working through both technical and communication issues, and that students expected to receive bus transportation are being checked in the district system one by one.
According to the district, the routing breakdown inadvertently unassigned elementary students, rising kindergarteners, sixth graders, ninth graders and Exceptional Children students from their scheduled bus routes because of an automated data transfer error. Those grade levels line up with students entering new schools this year, which left them especially exposed when the system failed to carry their records forward correctly.
How a Data Handoff Broke Down
CHCCS manages student transportation by linking records from its Infinite Campus database into North Carolina's Transportation Information Management System, a statewide computer-assisted routing platform maintained by researchers at NC State University and UNC Charlotte, according to the NC State University Institute for Transportation Research and Education. When student data fails to sync properly between the two systems, routes can be built without the children who are supposed to be riding them, which appears to be what happened as the district prepared for the new school year.
District officials also admitted that, separate from the software glitch, administrators failed to properly notify affected families in advance that existing school walk zones would be strictly enforced for the 2026-27 academic year, per Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Walk-zone information did not reach all affected families, and district leaders acknowledged the communication shortcomings publicly. Under North Carolina state law and local district policy, public school systems are only required to provide bus transportation to students who live 1.5 miles or more from their assigned campus, according to the NC Department of Public Instruction, meaning some families only learned this week that their children fell outside that mandated radius.
Families Told to Contact School Data Managers
Families missing route information or reporting assignment errors were asked to contact their school's data manager, and CHCCS said it is troubleshooting transportation assignments household by household. The district said it expects to resolve the transportation problem by the following week, with Superintendent Trice's Tuesday statement setting the September 3 deadline for updated assignments. Jenks stressed to ABC11 that the district does have the drivers needed for its routes, meaning the disruption is rooted in data and notification failures rather than staffing shortfalls.
That distinction matters given the district's recent history. CHCCS spent 2022 and 2023 battling a severe bus driver shortage before raising starting driver pay to $20 an hour and consolidating neighborhood stops, moves that allowed it to fully staff its primary routes heading into recent school years, according to Chapelboro.com. The district also added dedicated evening bus routes in November 2023, departing middle schools at 5:35 p.m. and high schools at 6:35 p.m. Monday through Thursday, specifically to remove transportation barriers for students staying after school for extracurricular activities.
A District Serving Thousands of Riders Daily
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools serves roughly 12,000 students across 20 schools and runs about 55 morning and afternoon bus routes that carry an estimated 55% of the district's student body each day, per reporting from The Local Reporter. That scale helps explain why even a narrow data error touching a handful of grade levels could ripple into a chaotic first week for hundreds of families relying on the bus to get their kids to class on time.
Trice took office as the district's 28th superintendent in June 2025, moving up from deputy superintendent after former chief executive Nyah Hamlett departed, according to Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. He is now navigating his second full academic year at the helm as the district works to rebuild trust with parents whose children spent the opening days of school uncertain about how they would get home. Chapel Hill Transit, the municipal system separate from the school district, secured an $8.8 million federal grant in Hoodline's report on the Triangle transit windfall to buy 13 replacement buses and driver simulation technology, part of a $32 million package spread across Research Triangle transit providers, though that funding is aimed at municipal bus fleets rather than the school system's current routing crisis.
For now, CHCCS is asking anxious parents to verify their information in Infinite Campus and watch for updated route assignments as the September 3 deadline approaches. District leaders have not detailed how cascading changes triggered by newly added stops might affect students already reassigned, leaving some families to keep checking day by day whether their children have a seat on the bus.
