First day was off to ‘a great start’

By MEGHAN BRADBURY news@breezenewspapers com

More than 100,000 children headed back to school Thursday and, despite some late buses, the first day of class was off to a great start, public school officials said

“The number is significantly smaller than last year and the delays are 30 minutes or less compared to an hour, or more, last year,” Lee County School District spokesperson Rob Spicker said of to-school transports

The district would like to remind parents that if their child is not currently assigned to a bus, or they want to request a new or different bus stop, they need to call their child’s school to enter the request

“We will collect all the requests for the first two weeks of school and process them all at the same time Once all the changes are made we notify the bus riders several days in advance of the change taking place so they can be ready for the first day of the new service It is a process, but prevents us from making changes every single day that can be very disruptive based on the requests that come in Instead, we make one group of changes for everyone all at once,” Spicker said

Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier said during a Tuesday night meeting that the district was still in need of 67 bus drivers

See BACK TO SCHOOL, page 8

C C P D S c h o o l R e s o u r c e O f f i c e r S Wilcox works the first day of school at Caloosa Elementary School Thursday morning as kids head back to class also will include an appointee from the Youth Council and the Cape Coral Historical Museum for a total of 14 members

The resident members will be chosen to represent varying years of residency

“My intent is to categorize the residents based on the number of years (they have

See STAKEHOLDERS, page 30