Dear Families,

We want to write a note to apologize for the bus difficulties that happened today. We know that both morning and afternoon routes were difficult. The administrative team did stay at AFIA until we had confirmation that all children were delivered home safely. If you are able to bring your child to school tomorrow, we ask that you consider doing this as we are still working to get more information from Daye Transportation. We want to assure you that our administrative team met with Daye Transportation numerous times over the summer in an effort to ensure that our first day bus routes went smoothly. In our efforts to make today go as smoothly as possible, this morning we had four staff members ready to ride each of four buses and we had two staff members ride two of our routes home tonight.

We are working diligently to resolve this issue. I am standing by my phone right now, as I have asked Patrick Daye or a representative from Daye Transportation to contact me before the end of tonight with updates on our morning routes.

Providing your child with an excellent education is a top priority for all of us at AFIA. We also pride ourselves in going above and beyond in serving our students and families, including providing you with excellent customer service. I know that today when you tried to call our AFIA main line that sometimes you did not get an immediate answer. We had multiple AFIA staff people on phone lines from 7 AM – 10 AM and again from 3 PM – 6:00 PM today, using multiple lines. However, with all today’s transportation challenges, we still missed some of your calls. We always strive to answer your calls immediately, particularly when you are calling for transportation updates.

I commend the AFIA staff as all hands were on deck and our staff stayed in the building until after 5:30PM making sure all children were well supervised and safe while we waited for buses. We also had numerous staff in the building until after 7 PM, answering calls from families and waiting for the call from Daye to let us know that all students were home safe.

In an effort to provide you with additional options for communication, in addition to calling our main line at 816.444.1720, you can also text us at 816.377.3926 (this is a temporary text line that we are using to help us communicate with families during the beginning of the school year). You can also email info@afiakc.org as this email address forwards to everyone on our administrative team. In situations like today’s, we check email every few seconds for updates from the bus company, so we will likely see your email, while fielding calls.

We will keep you updated. In spite of today’s bus challenges, we had an excellent first day and are so thrilled to be in our new facility. Thank you for your ongoing support and collaboration.

Looking forward,
Tricia DeGraff
Executive Director