Bus Registration

Students who qualify for general transportation services must register by August 16, 2024, in order to be guaranteed bus service on the first day of school. 

Registrations after September (a newly enrolled student, for example) can take up to 10 days or longer to determine routing and bus stop.

Route times and information will be available by August 30, 2024, and can be accessed in SMART tag accounts. 

We may not be able to fully process registrations received after the deadline until late September. You will be responsible for transportation until the route and stop information is processed.

We confirm the information you shared on the registration form and build routes and bus rosters. We will post the information for families in their SMART tag accounts by the end of August.

If your student has a split household and is requiring two routes to be able to go both parents’ houses, there are a few criteria that must be met.

• Both addresses must be in the correct boundary for the school of attendance for your student
• Both addresses must be on file in Skyward after providing proof of residency to the school
• A bus registration must be completed for one of the two addresses for your student(s).

Once all these criteria have been met, an email must be sent to dispatch@nthurston.k12.wa.us providing your student’s name and both addresses from which your student needs routing. This must be done each year. It can take up to 10 school days to process new requests, so you will need to check your Smart Tag Parent App to see when secondary routing has been assigned.

You may request a bus stop in your area if no other bus stop exists by using our bus stop request form. After evaluation, new stops may take 10 days (or longer if the request is made in late August or early September).

Students who are not registered for transportation and arrive at a bus stop (established because other families registered their students) will be transported to school, but will be asked to be picked up by a guardian after school. Transportation will be unavailable until we have received the students' registration and routed the student on a bus.

Students do not qualify for transportation services if they reside in a walking zone; attend an NTPS School on a waiver; or attend a childcare facility or after-school program that is outside your residential boundary or district program placement boundary. See a list of day care facilities by NTPS school boundaries.

Students who the district has identified as qualified to receive special transportation services, including special needs, McKinney-Vento, and foster care services, do not have to fill out the registration form.

The required transportation requests are sent directly to us. Families who have students who have been registered through special needs, McKinney-Vento, and foster care services will receive a call from NTPS Transportation with their individualized information.

All students may be assigned seats. Buses are cleaned regularly.