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When a major landslide cut off Highway 36 near Grizzly Creek last spring, Fortuna Union High School students living on the east side of the slide, many of whom relied on the bus stop in Bridgeville to get to campus, were given two options: finish out the school year online or take the dicey detour over Redwood House Road. Given that the highway closure was only temporary, many families opted for remote learning.

Caltrans reopened the section of highway to one-way controlled traffic a few weeks later, but it closed again at the end of May when the hillside destabilized and killed a road worker. The highway remained closed for about a month. By the time it reopened in early July, kids were out of school for summer break.

When the 2025-26 school year began, the Bridgeville bus route remained on hold, even though Highway 36 was open to one-way controlled traffic. Fortuna Union High School District (FUHSD) Superintendent Clint Duey didn’t think it was safe for the bus to travel through the landslide-plagued stretch, so the route was suspended, pressuring parents to either drive their kids to school themselves or coordinate carpools with other families.

One year later, the route remains suspended due to safety concerns, and Bridgeville parents are urging the school district’s board of trustees to take immediate action to restore bus service to the rural community.

‘I Can’t Afford to Keep This Up’

When Bridgeville residents John and Sherry Poundstone heard the bus route suspension would continue into the 2025-26 school year, they decided to keep their two teenage daughters at home for remote independent study, operating under the assumption that the girls could return to in-person learning as soon as the road was repaired. 

“The school district told us they may have to do distance learning for the first couple of months because of the slide,” John told the Outpost during a recent phone interview. “Well, a couple of months turned into a year, and the distance learning was terrible.”

Sherry described the remote learning experience as “catastrophic on many levels,” and fears her daughters will be “disadvantaged academically [and] socially.”

“We have a Senior this year who fell so far behind that she would not be graduating on time if it weren’t for East High School,” she wrote via email. “The other teen has an IEP [individualized education program] and is significantly behind as a Junior because she cannot absorb an education without direct interaction with her teachers. … I’ve watched their mental health really suffer by being denied the ability to be on campus and truly experience high school.”

John said he called the district superintendent numerous times throughout the 2025-26 school year to ask when the bus route would be restored, and was told: “It’s going to be taken care of.” In the meantime, the Poundstones were advised to use the Riverside Park Road bus stop on the other side of the slide near Carlotta, about 14 miles away from the Bridgeville stop. It wasn’t ideal, but it beat driving all the way to Fortuna.

Last month, around the start of the new school year, Sherry found out a registered sex offender lives within walking distance of the Riverside Park bus stop. Concerned about his daughters’ safety and left with few other options, John started driving the girls to school himself. 

“It’s about a 68-mile drive round trip, so I try to run around town or go to the park and kill time so I don’t have to drive back home and then turn around and drive back again,” John said, adding that he spends roughly $700 on fuel each week. “I can’t afford to keep this up. I’m probably in town for four hours out of every day, not taking care of the house, not taking care of the leaky roof and not feeding the animals because of [Superintendent] Duey.”

A few other Bridgeville-area parents interviewed by the Outpost expressed similar concerns, worrying that the bus stop will be eliminated if the board of trustees doesn’t intervene, especially since the route serves only about a dozen kids. 

Alysia Hegg said she recently moved her family to Fortuna so she wouldn’t have to rely on other parents to get her 14-year-old son to school each day.

“It’s been a huge pain in the butt,” Hegg said during a phone interview this week. “I had a neighbor who offered to take him to school and charged me $100 a month, and someone else was able to bring him home from sports a few days a week. I was really lucky those two families were able to help me out, but I just decided to move to town so I wasn’t on the other side of the slide if something were to happen.”

Another parent, Andy White, said his daughter isn’t in high school yet, but he worries for other kids in the community.

“We’re in a pretty low-income area, and some parents can’t afford to drive their kid both ways twice a day and maintain a job,” White said. “Then there’s some parents that might not be the best folks, and they just don’t care enough to drive their kid into school. That’s not fair to the kid. And if we’re paying taxes into [the school district], they should continue their bus services that they’ve always had all the way out to Bridgeville.”

‘It is Inherently Dangerous to Run a Bus Through That Area’

The superintendent stands by his decision. In an emailed statement to the Outpost, Duey emphasized that he “will not be the Superintendent who knowingly puts kids at risk.”

“While the road is technically open it is inherently dangerous to run a bus through that area on a daily basis,” he wrote via email. “I have communicated that with families on more than one occasion. I have spoken with CalTrans district 1 folks and they concur that my decision was reasonable and best given the situation that the slide could come down against [sic] any time. I will always put the safety of students first and can not in good conscience put them at such risk.”

Asked whether insurance or school finances played a role in the district’s decision to suspend the route, Duey reiterated that the concerns are “purely safety.” 

“All districts run home to school transportation as a loss to their general budgets,” he wrote via email. “The best estimate [for the cost of the bus route] would be in the neighborhood of $50,000. The district has not experienced as large of a deficit in that area during the time of shut down.”

Duey added that the Riverside Park stop is another option for parents who aren’t able to drive their kids all the way to Fortuna. He acknowledged that a registered sex offender lives nearby. “That’s unfortunate for sure, but there are many more that live within a mile of FHS [Fortuna High School] itself.”

“I do understand the inconvenience for parents in this situation,” Duey’s statement continued. “It should also be known that I grew up in Bridgeville and have a full understanding of what the commute entails and want very much to serve that community. I have reviewed the situation thoroughly … and have personally drove through the site and can see the large boulders and stumps positioned above the roadway.”

Duey pointed to a video of a large stump rolling down the hillside as further evidence that the route is dangerous. The video in question, posted to the Caltrans District 1 Facebook page in mid-June, shows a spider excavator uprooting the stump in what appears to be a planned operation. 

Still, Duey asserted that the slide area is “no safer today than the day that poor worker was killed.”

Reached for additional comment, Caltrans District 1 spokesperson Myles Cochrane said, “If a Caltrans highway is open, it’s been deemed safe for travel.”

“Caltrans staff have discussed conditions at the Route 36 slide with the superintendent and many other members of the community,” Cochrane wrote via email. “Nobody can characterize travel through any roadway, particularly an active slide area, as having zero risk. When Route 36 is open, however, it means our staff have determined that current conditions support public travel with traffic control, monitoring and stabilization measures in place. We continue to monitor conditions, and traffic is held or the highway is closed when conditions do not support safe passage.”

Michael Davies-Hughes, the county’s superintendent of schools, told the Outpost that the Humboldt County Office of Education “has no decision-making authority” on the bus route issue, but emphasized that “there can be no compromises when student and staff safety are in question.”

“Every situation is unique, and the district would have considered many factors in their decision-making, with student and staff (bus driver) safety as the main focus,” Davies-Hughes wrote via email. “Ultimately, the decision on which bus routes to run and the reasons for running them or not running them is made by the district leadership.”

The FUHSD Board of Trustees will discuss the Bridgeville bus stop issue at its next meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 6 p.m. in the Fortuna High School Library. The agenda can be found here.