This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage.
It is day three of school for students in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and transportation issues persist, with many students left in the lurch when a bus doesn’t show up.
“It’s been terrible,” Danielle Richardson said, describing the traffic as she dropped off her kid at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School.
Like many other parents, she was tired of waiting in a long car line, so she parked in a nearby neighborhood and walked the rest of the way.
Her older kids that go to nearby Eleanor Roosevelt High School had to take a Metrobus instead of a regular school bus because they were left stranded two days in a row waiting for a ride that never showed up.
“The Chipmunk app was stating that the bus was like .2 miles away, and they had to end up getting on public transportation because the bus never showed up, and they were about to be late, so they got on the bus,” Richardson said.
Prince George’s County Public Schools wrote to parents, in a frequently-asked-question post, to expect an adjustment period as they move to the new bus tracking app Chipmunk.
Henrietta Garber was seen pleading with a bus driver to let her middle school-aged kids on the bus even though it was not technically their stop.
“I told her that the kids have been going to school like after 10 each day, which is not good for them. So she saw my plight and just decided to take them just for today, and then tomorrow we have to go back to our original bus stop,” Garber said.
Even for parents such as Ivin Hicks, who drives his kids to school rather than relying on the bus, the disruptions are forcing him to park away from Robert Goddard Montessori School and walk his daughter in because the car line stretched half a mile.
“Oh, it’s been affecting me a lot. Like, I’m literally taking meetings as we speak while I’m walking my, you know, daughter to school because I’m not getting in that line. So it’s been a logistics nightmare for everyone,” Hicks said.
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