LISD Is Taking Over Its Own Bus System. Here's What That Means for Your Morning.

If your kid rides the bus to an LISD school, the district wants you to know something before August: the whole operation is changing hands. Not just management tweaks — a full takeover. Lewisville ISD is ending its 30-year relationship with Texas Central School Bus and running its own transportation department, from the drivers to the dispatch software, starting with the 2025-26 school year.

The board heard a detailed update at its June 2 work session. No vote needed. The decision was already made in April. What trustees got instead was a progress report, and there's actually a fair amount to show.

The hiring math is real, and it's moving. LISD's target is 220 to 230 drivers before school starts. As of the June 2 update, 146 drivers and monitors were already in pre-employment processing — drug and alcohol testing, the works — with another 47 in background checks and 49 more who'd applied but hadn't yet submitted complete paperwork. The district set bus driver pay at $23 an hour. That's the number worth watching: it has to be high enough to pull in qualified people in a labor market that's still tight.

The old contractor's three local facilities — in Lewisville and The Colony — are permanently closing, which means 460 layoffs. Some of those drivers are presumably applying for LISD positions. Whether the transition is smooth depends heavily on how many of them make it through.

The technology upgrade is the part parents will actually feel. Right now, the Here Comes the Bus app pings every two to three minutes. Under the new Zonar GPS system rolling out this fall, that updates every ten seconds. That's not a small difference when you're standing at a curb with a kindergartner wondering if the bus is four minutes out or fourteen. The full rollout is expected around October, so the first weeks of school may still run on the older system.

The district is also installing RFID readers on buses — radio-frequency identification that reads student ID badges. A sound plays when a student boards: right bus, or wrong one. Transportation Director Dana Chandler made the case plainly at the work session, noting that a student who looks high-school age isn't always supposed to be on a high school bus. Elementary kids get a different orientation aid: animal signs posted near route numbers so younger students can recognize their bus without having to read a number.

On the cost side: bringing this in-house is expected to run about $2 million more than the current fiscal year's budget — but the alternative was a contractor renewal that Superintendent Lori Rapp said would have cost $3 to $5 million more than what the district currently spends. The state chips in $3.5 million for transportation. The rest — out of a $16 million transportation budget — comes from local funds. Running it themselves was, in Rapp's framing, the only way to avoid gutting something else.

Routes are being built now using existing district data. The app is being reconfigured to show route numbers instead of asset numbers — which, apparently, were printed on the back of the bus in a spot parents couldn't easily see. Small fix. Should've happened sooner.

The honest question hanging over all of this: can a district that has never run its own bus fleet hire, train, and retain 220-plus drivers before the first bell of the school year? It can't outsource the answer. If service slips in September, there's no contractor to point at. LISD owns every late bus now.

Watch for route assignments and a parent information session before summer ends. If you have a bus-riding student and haven't heard anything by mid-July, reach out to transportation@lisd.net.