Durham Public Schools opens year-round and specialty programs while grappling with Infinite Campus rollout and staffing vacancies

Durham Public Schools leaders on Thursday briefed the board and public on the start of the district's year and the status of operations as classes reopen. Superintendent Dr. Lewis said year-round schools began July 21 and specialty high schools — including the new Durham Early College of Health Sciences — opened Aug. 7; traditional schools will begin Aug. 25. The Early College, a partnership with Duke University, Duke Health, Durham Tech and a Bloomberg Philanthropies investment, enrolled 104 students in its inaugural class and will offer an associate degree pathway tied to clinical opportunities. The district also highlighted problems and fixes tied to its new student information system, Infinite Campus. District staff said Infinite Campus production access was made available to Durham staff on July 8, eight days before the first year-round school day. That compressed timeline delayed issuance of progress reports: year-round progress reports originally scheduled for Aug. 15 were rescheduled to Aug. 29. Dr. Lewis said about 9,751 parent accounts had been created in Infinite Campus — roughly 31 percent of families — and urged continued outreach to get more families connected. Transportation remains a pressure point. The superintendent and transportation staff said driver vacancies approached levels the district experienced in the prior year and that the district averaged about 30 percent vacancies in bus routes last year; those shortages contributed to service gaps. The district has reopened a bus lot that drivers had wanted, identified two "comfort areas" for drivers (Holton and Hamlin Road), and plans additional recruitment events, including a classified job fair on Aug. 23 at Hillside. Leaders described operational changes implemented this summer: route optimization to eliminate duplicate stops, new referral procedures to ensure better school/transportation coordination on student behavior, and a helpline and move-management plan to help teachers at schools undergoing renovation. The board also heard a staffing update: district officials said total vacancies (excluding athletics) were reported in the meeting materials and included teacher vacancies across year-round, specialty, elementary, middle and high schools. Human resources leaders said recruitment shows improvement compared with prior years and highlighted a recent job fair that produced applicants for both certified and classified openings. Other items in the back-to-school briefing included a district focus for the year on instructional coherence, school culture and restorative practices, supports for multilingual families, and a new school-tiering framework (foundational, emerging, accelerating, leading) to guide differentiated central-office supports and budget allocations. Board members thanked staff for the update and asked for continued communication about Infinite Campus progress and transportation routes as the term begins.