A Boston city councilor is pressing for answers from BPS leaders on the many transportation problems that plagued the first week of school, which kicked off last Thursday with just a third of district buses showing up on time to get kids to class.

Councilor Ed Flynn filed a hearing order for the Wednesday Council meeting, that references complaints he says were lodged by “many parents” about “school bus delays and in some instances, no shows for students who were waiting to be picked up,” during the first week of classes at Boston Public Schools.

Flynn wrote in the order that “parents waited with their children for as long as 30 to 45 minutes for school buses, and while some students were eventually picked up, others had to make alternative arrangements to drop off their children when their buses did not come.”

“There should be reliability and predictability in BPS transportation,” Flynn wrote, describing such wait times for students, parents and caregivers as “unacceptable.”

Data released Monday by the Boston Public Schools shed more light on the poor transportation performance seen during the first week of school. Ahead of the school year, the mayor and superintendent had made assurances that a new bus tracker technology app and efforts to solve prior bus driver shortages, via contract changes and hiring pushes, would help to address the district’s long-standing transportation woes.

On Thursday, Sept. 5, 34% of BPS buses were on time for morning drop-off at school, 62% had arrived by the 15-minute mark after the bell rang, and 80% had arrived by the time school had been in session for 30 minutes. The data doesn’t extend past the half hour mark in the information that was provided by BPS.

By comparison, 61% of buses were on time during the first day of school last year, according to Flynn’s hearing order, which points out that the state mandate is to have 95% of buses arrive on time.

In a statement, Superintendent of Schools Mary Skipper attributed the poor on-time performance on the first day of classes to the district working out the kinks of a new bus tracker app, Zum, that rolled out this year, and bus drivers becoming familiar with new school routes. She said the delays were “largely expected.”

“We appreciate our families’ patience as we work through these issues and we understand that many BPS families experienced frustrating transportation delays on the first day of school,” Skipper said in a statement. “We are deeply committed to improving our families’ experiences and our on-time performance.”

“These delays that happen in the first days of school were largely expected due to drivers and bus monitors navigating new routes and greeting new faces for the first time, and the implementation of the new Zum technology that the majority of our bus drivers, families, and school-based staff were using in real-world conditions for the first time,” Skipper added.

The superintendent described the day-over-day improvement seen on Friday, the second day of classes, when two-thirds of buses, or 67%, were on time in the morning, as “significant,” saying that number was comparable to what was seen on the first day of school last year.

The data show on-time performance did improve on Friday, but it also revealed that it worsened again on Monday, to kick off the second week of school, when just 57% of buses were on time to get kids to class in the morning.

Mayor Michelle Wu and Skipper last month announced a new three-year contract that BPS awarded to Zum, a technology platform that has since been implemented districtwide as an app with the aim of providing Boston families with “improved real-time bus tracking and enhanced communication and transparency about their child’s bus,” according to the mayor’s office.

BPS ended last school year with 90% on-time bus performance, shy of the state mandate.

Flynn wrote in his hearing order that while the new Zum app provides real-time information and better predictably, the district should have considered coordinating a “dry run” with drivers, parents and students, so drivers could have familiarized themselves with the routes and issues could have been resolved “ahead of time.”

Related Articles

Rumored Boston mayoral candidates remain mum on plans to challenge Michelle Wu in 2025

Does a century-old will hinder Boston’s White Stadium plan? Some seem to think so

Boston Mayor Wu extends BPS free museum initiative through 2024, but holds off on expanding it to all city kids

Broken elevators in Boston public housing complex leave residents stranded : ‘I have to stay in the house all day’

BPS has no-show buses, delays as Boston students return to school amid talk of transportation, safety and teacher’s contract

His order cites instances where the app became unavailable after a parent had been using it to track a school bus for 45 minutes, and had to bring their child to school. On the way back, the same parent’s child was on a school bus for two hours from Dorchester to South Boston before ultimately having to provide the driver with directions to his house, he wrote.

“This is about respect and equal access for all Boston families,” Flynn said in a Monday statement to the Herald.

BPS spokesman Max Baker said, however, that the day-over-day improvement from Thursday to Friday “was encouraging and in line with our experience piloting this new technology during our summer programming.”

The district anticipates continued improvement in on-time performance, as its staff and families become more familiar with using Zum, Baker said. He added that performance improved between days two and three compared to last year, with a 4% and 7% change, respectively.

“Large-scale change always comes with growing pains,” Skipper said, “and we are incredibly grateful to all our bus drivers, operations and school-based staff, and families who are working to help us build an improved transportation system to provide students with safe, reliable, and on-time transportation on a daily basis.”

BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper (Herald file)