The beginning of the upcoming school year is about one week away now and the Lincoln County School District No. 2 will have some new bus routes families will want to be aware of.

LCSD2 transportation director Ryan Lyman says the changes came as a result of a public meeting held last spring where residents gave their input.

“We were looking at making probably a couple dozen different changes,” Lyman said. “We ended up with about seven or so in Star Valley and seven or so in Cokeville.”

He says budgetary constraints means they cannot come and pick up everyone at their doorstep. So the new plans had to be consistent to where they go.

Everyone can see the new routes on the transportation’s website. Lyman says it has been redesigned to hopefully make things easier to find. At the top of the page there is a section called routes. This will show the upper valley and lower valley maps.

“A lot of times we get some questions about what does that mean,” Lyman said. “It’s not north and south, it’s the way the river flows.”

The upper valley is Afton, Grover, Auburn, Fairview, and Smoot. The lower valley map is Thayne, Alpine, Etna, and Star Valley Ranch.

“Find where you live on there,” Lyman said. “They’re kind of color coded, you can find your route. Then once you close that map then you can find your route number where you can get into the details of the stop times.”

He also says committees may develop consisting of administrators, parents, teachers, etc. to continue to develop criteria on best routes.

“We’re going to start that process kind of once we get school rolling,” Lyman said. “We’ve had a lot of parents that were at those (previous) meetings already. Certainly if somebody has interest in (volunteering) they can contact me or the district office.”

Lyman also says they are still in need of bus drivers and bus aides as well. Training for both jobs is included for those that apply even if you do not have a CDL license. The district will provide that training as well.

“All the training time that we spend, we pay folks for,” Lyman said. “We do all that training in-house.”

The bus aides responsibilities are really to assist the students. This may mean helping a student who is feeling sick on the bus or assisting children to a seat.

“I’ve asked parents sometimes if they ever get distracted by their kids in the back seat,” Lyman said he uses as an example. “Consider having 60 to 70 of them.”

He says those interested in applying for those jobs can do so on the district transportation’s website under employment.