Cleveland schools have made some progress on fixing issues with yellow school bus safety and contracted transportation companies, according to state agencies.
Late last year, the state sent the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) a demand for a “corrective action plan” after the district failed to correct transportation safety issues flagged by state officials, including bus drivers who failed to stop at railroad crossings or wore earbuds while driving. The district provides transportation to more than 15,000 students throughout Cleveland and surrounding areas.
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Safety issues with Cleveland school buses prompt state action
State officials say they have been trying for more than a year to get Cleveland schools to fix problems with district transportation including unsafe drivers and mechanical issues with buses.
In January, the district responded by submitting a five-page plan, its third such plan since March 2025. But unlike the previous two plans, which the district said it struggled to follow due to staffing shortages, CMSD has now made progress, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) and the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OHSP).
That progress includes filling staff vacancies, adding driver training and reviewing the documentation and vehicle quality of the more than 50 contracted bus, cab and van companies. The state, which has been meeting with the district frequently about the plan, is encouraged by the progress.
“While the district still has items to address, OSHP and DEW were pleased to see a large turnout of bus drivers and transportation directors at a recent safety training,” Lacey Snoke, a spokesperson for the DEW, wrote to Signal Cleveland in an email.
At the March 31 school board meeting, Karen Thompson, the district’s chief of operations, addressed the safety issues publicly and shared the steps the district is taking to resolve them. She was joined by transportation consultant Bill Andexler, whom the district hired to help correct the problems in seven areas identified by the state.
“There was a lot of concern when those letters came out,” Andexler said. “We’re addressing it, we’re moving forward, we’re taking the step, and we will be OK with the compliance.”
What were the main safety issues?
CMSD and the state have been going back and forth about transportation rule violations for more than a year. The district failed to follow laws covering everything from bus driver training to bus inspections to making sure contracted drivers were entered into a state database that checks whether or not they’ve committed a disqualifying criminal offense.
CMSD’s first corrective action plan, submitted in March of 2025, addressed issues with contracted bus drivers not monitoring students getting on and off the bus. That was followed by a September 2025 letter that found the district failed to follow that plan and had hired drivers with criminal records that make them ineligible to drive a bus — including for kidnapping.
In response, CMSD sent another corrective action plan in October. It also failed to follow this plan, prompting a longer letter from the state in December which included a threat to pull millions in transportation funding or issue misdemeanor citations to the staff responsible for breaking the law.
That letter also noted even more violations, including drivers who weren’t properly inspecting their vehicles, wore headphones on the job or, in one case, a driver who let his “buddy” drive a van of students. More broadly, the state also called CMSD out for a lack of leadership in the transportation department.
Eric Taylor, the district’s longtime director of transportation, retired last fall. A transportation compliance officer also left the district.
How is CMSD addressing them?
At the board meeting, Thompson shared that the district hired Timothy Primus as a new executive director for transportation. Primus is currently the principal at the John Marshall School of Engineering. She said the district had 27 applications for the job.
Andexler told the board that the district will need to improve in seven key areas, some of them easy, like providing an organizational chart. Others are more complicated, such as entering all contracted drivers into a state database. Additional improvements include routine driver training, documentation of vehicle inspections, and assuring all drivers, even those who work for contractors, have the necessary qualifications.
The district has hired a compliance staffer for the transportation department, which leaders said should help, but that person is currently juggling that role along with the job of scheduling transportation for field trips.
Apart from the state requirements, Thompson said CMSD had addressed specific issues that community members and parents have raised this year. That includes confusion with the process to schedule transportation for field trips, a contracted company that didn’t follow protocol after a vehicle had a mechanical issue and students were late to school, and drivers not stopping at railroad crossings, as required by law.
