CINCINNATI —

The Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education approved the transportation contract with the Southwest Ohio regional Transportation Authority (SORTA) Monday ahead of the new school year.

The contract was approved unanimously during a board meeting.

The contract will allow CPS students in grades 9-12 to ride public transportation to and from school activities during the school year.

The deal also allows seventh and eighth grade students who participate in extra-curricular activities to ride the Metro home.

Middle school students will continue to ride yellow buses to and from school at normal pick up times.

“Transportation is a key component of ensuring our students can get to school safely and on time,” said CPS Superintendent Iranetta Wright. “I am very grateful the CPS and Metro teams came together to ensure our students will have the most direct transportation to and from school this year.”

Students will receive route postcards in the mail from the CPS Transportation Department before the start of school.

The postcards will have more information for how high school students can get to and from school.

The postcard will also serve as students’ bus pass on August 18, the first day of school.

Students will pick up their Metro passes from their school on the first day of school.

“We are proud of our long history of serving students and families and look forward to our continued partnership with Cincinnati Public Schools during this upcoming school year,” said Darryl Haley, Metro CEO & General Manager. ‘We are committed, as always, to providing safe, on-time and reliable service that connects students to classes throughout the city.”

Seventh and eighth grade students participating in after-school activities can also pick up their Metro cards from their school.

If students do not receive their route cards by August 15 or have additional questions, they are encouraged to call the CPS’ transportation hotline at 513-363-RIDE (7433), Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. or visit them online.

CPS will host a virtual Transportation Information Session for parents on Sunday, Aug. 14, at 4 p.m.

For more information visit the CPS website.

KENTON COUNTY, Ky. —

A 15-year-old girl was sent to the emergency room after she was violently attacked on a Kenton County school bus on Thursday.

“I got stitches right here,” said Scott High School freshman Kyleigh Ketcham as she pointed to a spot over her left eye. “It's swollen all the way to the back of my head.”

The teen was riding home from school when she said someone from the back of the bus threw something at her. The mood was light, and kids were laughing as they pointed out the boy who was sitting behind Ketcham.

Ketcham says she poured water on the boy’s leg.

Video taken by another student shows the 17-year-old boy immediately leap from his seat and begin throwing a violent series of punches. About a dozen punches were unleashed onto the face of the 15-year-old girl.

“It just hurt really bad, but I was, like, trying to not cry in front of everyone. So, like, I didn't cry on the bus,” Ketcham said. “I was scared because, like, they could have seriously, like, done more damage.”

“It was just horrific, heartbreaking,” said the teen’s aunt, Corarinna Ketcham. “It was something out of a bad movie.”

“When he was done using her face as a punching bag, she got up and was shocked,” said the girl’s aunt.

Director of Public Information and Community Engagement for the Kenton County School District Jess Dykes released this statement about the incident:

"This type of behavior will not be tolerated and we take all incidents like this seriously. The Kenton County School District is following all policies and procedures with the district code of conduct. We are cooperating with local law enforcement on this investigation."

Taylor Mill police have filed misdemeanor assault charges against the boy.

Ohio school bus driver April Wise is being honored and hailed as a hero for saving a student’s life.

Her quick thinking stopped a young boy from getting hit by a car.

Now, school officials want to use her action as an example to hold up for other bus drivers.

Watch the full story in the video player above.

“For what she did that day, we definitely appreciate it,” the child’s father said.

Wise was honored with an award from the district law enforcement and state representatives on Monday.

“It’s a testament to what people should do and what they actually do,” State Rep. Bernie Willis said.

Video from the school bus shows the reason Wise was honored. She was paying close attention to what was happening around her and even knew the exact student that was getting off the bus.

“He is one of my quickest students to get on and off the bus. He is super quick,” Wise said.

But Wise was quicker. She grabbed the student before he got down the steps, saving him from getting hit by a car.

“The only thing that went through my brain was to keep him from getting off the bus,” Wise said.

Wise said she always has to be on high alert though since drivers consistently choose to ignore school buses on the road.

“They do, they do run our reds quick a bit,” Wise said.

Now, the video of her saving a student will be used as an example of what is expected when caring for a bus full of students.

“I so don’t deserve this, but I’m glad it’s bringing awareness and stuff, and hopefully, more people will take it into consideration,” Wise said.

CINCINNATI — Metro will discontinue its agreement with Cincinnati Public Schools, it wrote in a letter to the school system Wednesday.

The agreement will end in June 2022, after this current school year.

Metro cited a federal law prohibiting Metro/SORTA (Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority) from submitting a bid for their services in competition with private charter operators, and Metro says CPS opened up bids to for their next agreement in 2022.

"They've asked us to do something we're not allowed to do," said Kreg Keesee, SORTA board chairman. "What that means is that because they've asked private companies to bid on them, we can't provide the extra service even if we're able to."

Metro currently provides rides to CPS students for free, based on eligibility, to a variety of schools around the city. About 9,000 students use the bus system every day — nearly pre-pandemic levels.

Cincinnati Public Schools had recently asked the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority for some of its money back, saying $2.5 million worth of bus passes have gone unused after the elimination of Metro's XTRA routes.

The district said about half of the students who took Metro to school last year are not taking it this year, and those who do take Metro are often showing up late. Phoenix, a junior at Walnut Hills High School, said it is taking him about three times as long to get home from school every day since the XTRA routes were eliminated.

"There used to be only one bus that ran to each neighborhood — catch the bus at a certain time every single morning," Phoenix said. "Last year I could take one bus straight to home. It was 15-20 minutes tops. Now, it's an hour to get home. It takes two buses."

His mother, Lora Jost, said many Walnut families are now carpooling because of the bus struggles.

"It stresses us both out," Jost said. "When the buses do show up, it's a cluster mess because there's more cars in the way of the buses trying to do it. The buses are making it more difficult for the drivers, the drivers are making it more difficult for the bus riders."

RELATED: Cincinnati Public Schools board looking for solutions to canceled Metro bus routes for students

During a CPS board meeting, the district surveyed principals, finding "the current state isn't good." Parent complaints are up nearly 75%, while 82% of principals said they are seeing worse times than last year.

"It seems as though we haven't received from SORTA specific data requests that we've received in the past," board member Ben Lindy said. "Specifically, we haven't received comparative ridership data to understand how different the student experience is compared to last year's."

In response to the survey Metro said was completed without their knowledge, Metro said they were transparent in communicating changes to the XTRA routes — and noted conditions would have been worse if the XTRA routes had been maintained due to an ongoing bus operators shortage.

Metro said the service provided, while not without challenges, is working "reasonably well," though some parents say otherwise.

"We're doing what we think is the best that can be done under the circumstances," Keesee said. "We wish that folks, instead of saying that these should be the circumstances, [would] lean in to help us get there. We think it's working pretty well."

Even after the contract is up, Metro will continue providing the same routes thousands of students take every day. The difference could come down to who is forking over the money to get the kids to school.

RELATED: CPS busing: XTRA routes not coming back due to Metro driver shortage

BOUTON, Iowa —

Two Iowa towns are saying goodbye to their fire chief.

Ken Cavanaugh died of a heart attack, but not before pulling his school bus full of children off the road and saving their lives.

Cavanaugh was the fire chief in Woodward and Bouton.

"It's real tough. Real tough," said Karl Harris, the Bouton fire department captain.

"Losing one of your own is one of the toughest things you can do," Bouton firefighter Andy Wernli said.

Firefighters in Boutin, Iowa, are saying goodbye to their chief and their best friend. Ken Cavanaugh died Monday of a heart attack. He'd been in the hospital since Oct. 18. That's when he became ill driving a Woodward-Granger school bus. Despite his pain, he was able to pull the bus off the highway and into a soybean field. The kids got out safely.

"I'm sure the first thing he was thinking about is how am I going to keep these kids from getting injured or suffering with a catastrophic school bus crash," said Harris.

His friends are not surprised.

"He cares more about you than himself. He's always been that way," Harris said.

Cavanaugh has been a fire fighter here since 1977. Now the fire station is full of flowers from friends and family. All are remembering a brave and dedicated rescue worker, whose final act was saving so many lives.

"I think if anyone ever mentions Kenny Cavanaugh’s name, hero out to be right there with it," Wernli said.

Harris added, "He’s definitely a hero."

Watch the video above to learn more about this story.

BROWN COUNTY, Ohio — The driver of a pickup truck was airlifted to the hospital Friday morning after a head-on collision involving a school bus.

Brown County Dispatch confirmed air care responded to a collision between a truck and school bus before 9 a.m. along Purdy Road in Sardinia. The bus belonged to Eastern Local Schools, and Superintendent Dr. Michele Filon said the district is fully cooperating with the investigation.

None of the 20 children on the bus were seriously injured, but the family of the 39-year-old pickup truck driver said he has broken bones and may need surgery. Troopers said the driver was on his way to work when the crash happened.

Britton Denny, a man who lived near the crash, said he helped pull the students out of the back of the bus after the vehicle had extensive damage to the front.

"They were terrified," Denny said. "[I] really just tried to talk them down, calm them down and get the adrenaline to stop flowing, but I don't think there was a kid who came off that bus that wasn't crying."

Ohio State Highway Patrol said it is still unclear how the crash happened.

The crash comes one day after several students were taken to the hospital when a pickup truck hit the back of a Middletown City Schools bus. All of the students had "minor injuries" per the city's communications manager.

Related video above: Can science explain why people cheat?

Bekah King, Abi Roberts, and Morgan Tabor have a lot in common. They describe themselves as free-spirited adventurers and fearless risk takers, all obsessed with music and the movie "Megamind."

They say they also unknowingly had the same boyfriend at the same time.

Following their discovery, rather than succumbing to their sadness, the three young women said they dumped him, saved up money, purchased a school bus and spent over two months renovating it.

On June 25, the trio took their 30-year-old bus — which they renamed the BAM bus after their initials — on a road trip across the Western United States and into the next chapter of their lives.

The discovery that changed everything

The three young women made the heartbreaking discovery on a cold, snowy afternoon in December 2020, when Tabor, 21, suddenly felt waves of suspicion about her boyfriend.

After deep diving into his social media, she discovered another woman's page on VSCO, a photography app, flooded with photos of her and Tabor's boyfriend.

"I have no words to describe the feeling I got seeing the photo of him with another girl," Tabor, who lives in Boise, Idaho, told CNN. "I thought I was going to marry this guy. We had talked about houses and what our marriage would be like. My world came crumbling down. I had to mourn the loss of this future we were building up together. It was soul crushing."

She reached out to the woman — who is now best friends with Tabor, Roberts and King but couldn't join them on the road trip — and they kept digging. Eventually, they found Roberts via his social media comments and likes.

They quickly reached out to her and realized he was her boyfriend, too.

"I was crushed," Roberts, 19, told CNN. "I cried in front of these two girls I never met before. It was really emotional. It felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel."

The three of them ended up on a six-hour FaceTime call, in the middle of which Tabor heard a knock on her door. She looked outside and saw their cheating boyfriend standing at her door with flowers.

"He wanted to surprise her. Morgan grabs the flowers, puts them on the floor, and was like 'I made some new friends today' and showed him her phone with the two of us on FaceTime," Roberts, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, said. "His face just dropped. It was so priceless to see."

After offering excuses and explanations — including one where he said he believed it was OK to be with multiple women at the same time — the girls dumped him. Together.

Following the confrontation, the young women continued their search through his social media account, where they discovered their now ex-boyfriend had been dating six women in total, including them.

One of those women was Bekah King, who also lives in Boise, and had been casually dating him for five months.

"Two hours after they confronted him and he promised to never talk to another woman again and said he was a changed man, he reached out to me and asked to hang out," King, 18, told CNN. "The next day, the girls found my Instagram and messaged me and we immediately hopped another five hour call."

Within days, heartbreak turned into healing as King, Roberts, and Tabor girls quickly became friends. It didn't take long for them to realize they all had the same dream: buying a bus and exploring the country.

"The ball started rolling from there. We wanted to live out this dream. (Have we) found our group of adventure people?" Tabor said. "Having that from the beginning, just something we could look forward to, helped so much. We were living out our dream. It was something so needed during a really hard time."

Moving on to 'the next chapter' of their lives

In March, the girls found the vehicle of their dreams— a green school bus that once belonged to a fire crew.

That BAM bus, as they called it, took months of renovations — they put down floor boards, repainted the outside, built bunk beds and a roof deck and put in insulation.

The trio saved up around $5,000 altogether to purchase and renovate the bus, which was finally ready to hit the road on June 25.

Before heading out, the girls made sure they felt mentally prepared and healed after the ordeal they had gone through together.

"We don't talk about him anymore. He isn't part of our lives. There's so much more to look forward to," Tabor said. "He's on the way back corner of our minds. We have moved on to the next chapter of our lives. It's all about our adventure, our growth, and where we go next."

Their road trip started in Idaho. They then made their way east, spending time soaking in hot springs, taking dips in lakes and visiting Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. They also stopped at Yellowstone National Park on their way to Montana, where they are currently camping in Bozeman.

"If I had a word to describe this whole experience, it would be surreal," Roberts said. "From the moment we pulled out of the driveway in Boise, we have met so many incredible people at campgrounds, on hikes, through our Instagram. We learned so much from so many inspiring people and the amazing nature we have been able to spend time in. It's absolutely surreal."

The three work remotely to fund their trip on their own without help from their parents or anyone else, but often receive Venmo donations from kind strangers.

While they had intended to head back home in November, the three are considering extending the trip and finding ways to make it a sustainable, long-term situation.

"This guy doesn't deserve any credit, but thank you for bringing us together, honestly," Roberts said. "As awful and horrible as that moment was, we would all do it again just to meet each other."