Wake County public school system bus route data for AY 2023-24

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published research in 2014 that recommended later school start times (after 8:30 AM) for adolescents to promote their health and academic success. Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) is the largest school district in North Carolina, with nearly 200 schools and over 160,000 students, and all its middle school and high school students start school at 8:30 AM or earlier. In the 2023-2024 school year, a national bus driver shortage made daily student transportation challenging and delayed the school board’s ability to prioritize school start time changes. This study used a mathematical optimization model following a Bin Packing approach to minimize the number of buses required to complete all the routes in the nine sub-districts within Wake County. Scenarios that changed the school start times to abide by AAP recommendations were generated and tested using bus route information from the 2023-2024 school year. Results show that areas with a higher concentration of magnet and special schools require a greater increase in the number of buses needed to swap elementary and high school start times. The results also indicate significant interactions between the sub-districts, which challenge WCPSS’s ability to logistically isolate a sub-district to use as a case study for start time changes. This research investigates the current relationship between transportation requirements and school start times. It provides analysis that could inform decision-making and planning as WCPSS hires more bus drivers and pursues the best outcomes for its students.

Methods
The data for various Wake County, NC-based schools was collected via a webscraping script using R from publicly available websites.