COMMENTS

BACK TO SCHOOL ORTING

By: Lyle Evansiano September 2, 2008

It is that time of the year when the entire valley has its scheduled changed. Not by falling backward, or jumping forward, or even by a Lahar Siren. It's Back To School time.

Even Mother Nature has decided to bring temperatures during the night below 50, leaving the distinct feeling in the air that hot cocoa and an Orting Football game isn't that far away at all.

With the new Orting Middle School opening it will bring some changes for some students that used to ride the bus, and for some who have never ridden on the bus. Please check the route sheets carefully for changes for your student.

Some of the major changes will be for the Village Green/Carbon River Landing and River’s Edge. If your Middle School student rode the bus last year, they will now be walking to the new Middle School, the buses will only be picking up the High School students.

In the Calistoga Development the Middle School students will have a bus ride to and from school, High School will still walk.

Rainier Meadows will also have bus service for Middle School students only. For the students that live in town, they may catch any bus over @ the High School to shuttle over to the new middle school. In the afternoon if they wish to shuttle back over, we will have a couple of specific buses that will swing back into OHS bus zone and drop them off. We do not know which buses those will be yet, we will have to wait and see how many kids we have on each bus to determine which buses. The school will be notified which ones they will be and will pass that the information along to your student.

With opening any new school there will be a learning period so please be patient and hopefully we will get it all figured out in the first week.

To explain how we determine the students who ride and those who do not, we use a radius mile from the school they attend to your neighborhood. The State of Washington funds Transportation, and they only fund the students who live outside the radius mile (as the crow flies), not how you may drive it.

So, if you live within the radius mile of the school your child attends they will be walking to school.
For parents that have Kindergarten students we wait until about 1 week before kindergarten starts to get the midday routes done, by then we will have most of the kids registered for school and all the information we need. Just before kindergarten starts you can call the school and get the information you need, or call Transportation.

If you need any information you can call the school district, transportation, or access Orting School district on-line at www.orting.wednet.edu

Elementary Bus Routes: www.orting.wednet.edu/Images/mmDocument/district/Transportation%2008-09/Elem08%5B2%5D.pdf

OMS & OHS Bus Routes: www.orting.wednet.edu/Images/mmDocument/district/Transportation%2008-09/OHS%20oms%2008%5B1%5D.pdf