FAIRBORN — Fairborn City Schools informed parents that they would have to drive their students to school Wednesday morning, citing that not enough bus drivers were available to cover routes.

The district posted the notification on its Facebook page around 5:15 a.m. Wednesday, corresponding with a TEC call made to families. In a second notification, the district said that a number of bus drivers had quarantined due to COVID-19.

This comes after 22 bus drivers called off on short notice on Monday, causing the district to switch to virtual learning.

The district had reached out to the Dayton Public Service Union (DPSU) Local 101 to determine why so many drivers had called off work at the last minute.

Superintendent Gene Lolli told our partners at WDTN that the district is still trying to determine if Monday and Wednesday’s bussing issues are related. Lolli said he does not believe either incident was meant to be a strike.

Several drivers are quarantined and contact tracing is underway, according to Lolli. Testing will be conducted as necessary.

“We encourage all families to have a ‘back up’ plan, as with COVID-19 changes can and will happen daily,” the district said in the initial post. “We truly appreciate your patience as we work to solve today’s issues.”

The district said that Monday’s cancellation of in-person classes was due to the last-minute nature of employee absences.

“We cannot select certain routes to cover and others to not cover, as this would be unfair to certain students,” they said.

Though the same issue occurred again on Wednesday, the district said they were better prepared for the situation and were able to continue having in-person classes. The only exception to this is Fairborn High School, which will be remote learning all week due to a positive COVID-19 case.

School bus routes ran as normal to take students home Wednesday afternoon.