La Joya ISD considers cutting unfunded transportation services

The La Joya school district may eliminate some of its bus services due to operational and financial inefficiencies rooted in the corrupt practices of previous administrations.

The transportation department is in the midst of a long-overdue upgrade, which includes revamping the 20-year-old routing system, deploying new technology and training employees in new practices.

A recent audit confirmed that current transportation practices have actually been detrimental, costing the district $458 per student, which is the highest per student ridership transportation cost in the region. For comparison, Edinburg CISD spends $453 per student, but with three times the square mileage as La Joya ISD.

LJISD aims to cut practices that cause the most challenges, such as door-to-door services, extracurricular rideshare, cross-campus transportation and flexible routing. Administrative staff want to gather community feedback before making final decisions, but they’re determined to correct the issues and deploy the new system in the 2026-27 school year.

“Things that we are doing today, and I want to call this out and be very clear about what we’re doing, a lot of the things that we are doing today are a direct reaction or a direct response to the waste, fraud, corruption and abuse that our district has been plagued with over the years,”  Chief of Operations & Infrastructure S.B. Pierson said. “Some of these things that have caused inefficiencies…they’ve become a part of our system, and we need to address those because they’re driving up the cost of our operation.”

PAIN POINTS AND REMEDIES

A few of La Joya ISD’s current transportation practices are either entirely uncommon or uncommon for districts of similar size, according to Pierson.

At LJISD, every student is eligible for school bus transportation, while most other districts only offer the service to students living 2 miles or more from their assigned campus. The 2-mile radius restriction is a state regulation and state-funded. Any trips La Joya ISD bus drivers make inside the state-regulated radius come out of the district’s pocket.

Additionally, the La Joya school system offers door-to-door services. The more common practice is using satellite bus stops to pick up and drop off groups of students who live in nearby neighborhoods. LJISD is already working on making this a reality with the Transfinder software program, which maps satellite stops with an equitable walk-to-stop ratio for students.

Once the program creates a route model, Pierson and his team will do on-site visits to ensure the locations are safe and feasible. Then, the team plans to present the recommendations to parents for feedback before bringing the final recommendations to the board of managers.

“Safety is at the top of our priority lists,” Superintendent Dr. Marcey Sorensen said. “So we will also be working in collaboration with our chief of police and our local law enforcement to make sure that…[they] agree [it’s] a safe space for students.”

A practice that seems to be unique to La Joya ISD is what the district calls a rideshare service, which is busing students home after extracurricular activities. This causes drivers to go into overtime, use more fuel and results in more wear and tear on the vehicle.

The district also offers cross-campus transportation for children of staff members, which is not uncommon in other districts. However, at LJISD, drivers sometimes go out of their way and off course to make these extra trips, whereas most districts only offer the service if the stop is on the designated route.

Other issues include last-minute requests and frequent flexible routing adjustments, which reduce efficiency, drive up costs and create service delays. Pierson plainly stated these practices are a direct response to the abuse of power from previous elected officials.

“You’ll see where a lot of our routes are [inefficient]…it’s because, one, we didn’t have the appropriate routing software to be able to make the modernizations and adjustments year after year as we should,” he said. “But other parts of it are directly tied to, I’ll just call it out, particular trustees and board members at that time having preferences on what buses their kids ride or things like that that we had to accommodate. Those things were never adjusted or corrected, so we’re dealing with some of those pain points today.”

WHAT’S NEXT

This month, the district begins the community and staff engagement part of the process for the re-routing system. Community engagement will continue through April until Pierson and his staff present the final transportation recommendations to the board at the last meeting of the month.

The superintendent assured that the district will communicate the key changes throughout the entire process.

“The team is going to go out and engage with the community in the exact way that we always have,” she said. “These aren’t changes that are happening today. We haven’t finalized what those recommendations are because we really do want to hear from the community.”

The chief of operations and infrastructure was candid about the upcoming changes being difficult. He stated that there will be growing pains, but it is ultimately in the best interest of the district and its students.

“We want you to know and be assured that we’re going to do our due diligence to make sure that we do everything that we can within our power to make this as seamless as possible for our parents,” Pierson said. “And obviously, we don’t want to affect our students in a negative fashion. But we have to do what’s best for the district to make sure that we’re providing a sustainable, reliable system as we move forward into the future.”