A new BPS report announced the district’s morning buses have reached 94% on-time performance and laid out their long-term plan to increase transportation efficiency, starting by proactively removing students from bus routes who are not consistently riding.

“We’re really excited about the report that’s being released today, and trying to help take folks under the hood a little bit of what goes into transportation,” BPS Transportation Director Dan Rosengard said, sitting around a roundtable discussion at the Rafael Hernandez School with several parents, students, Mayor Michelle Wu and the BPS superintendent Wednesday. “What we’re doing to improve the progress we’ve made, but also the work that remains to be done.”

BPS reached 94% of buses arriving before the morning bell in March, the highest performance on record in the district, the released Transportation Progress Report states. Morning buses averaged 91.7% from October to March this year, up from 90.6% through the same period in the prior school year.

Afternoon buses though averaged 86% on-time performance in March and have remained later on average than all the three prior school years throughout the year, data in the report shows.

The district was mandated to reach 95% overall on-time performance in an agreement with the state to avoid a receivership in 2022. The state agreement expires in June 2025.

The year got off to a “rocky start” as the district implemented new GPS Zum technology on buses, Wu said, but the data allows BPS to plan “even better than could have been imagined before.” When BPS officials rolled out the GPS technology, allowing parents to see real-time information on their kids’ buses, the year kicked off with a startling low 34% on-time performance.

BPS officials announced a series of long-term steps to further improve the transportation system based on new data and systemic changes, and an immediate new “Ridership Procedure” to roll out after April break.

The Ridership Procedure aims to remove students not currently using the bus from routes.

“If a student doesn’t ride the bus for two weeks or 10 school days without proactively telling us through the Zum app, ‘I’m missing the bus because I’m sick or on vacation,’ then we’ll reach out to families to let them know we’ll be pausing their bus assignments,” said Rosengard.

Families may reclaim the bus assignments at any time after the pause, Rosengard said. The BPS report estimates 1,000 students will be opted out, which it initially estimates could save up to $3 million to $5 million per year.

In the long-term, the report details, efforts to update the districts’ facilities and add inclusion resources will aid transportation by allowing students access to schools that meet their needs closer to home.

“Mergers, closures, and reconfigurations lead to fewer schools that, on average, have larger
student bodies,” the report lays out one example. “That also means fewer, fuller buses.”

Parents at the roundtable praised the district’s progress on busing, but laid out a long list of room for improvement, including inaccurate estimated delay times on Zum, delays in direct communication when there’s an issue, drivers’ training with the new technology and more.

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“I did see little, small changes to bus times in the morning, that now it’s like clockwork,” said Shamieh Wall, a Henderson School parent, who said she used to have “literal no shows for days” in previous years.

“Boston Public Schools is the only major, the only urban school district in the country that reports our on-time performance every day throughout the school year, and the only district in Massachusetts that does so as well,” Mayor Michelle Wu said. “We are holding ourselves to the highest standard nationally, and we continue to push ourselves to do even better. We will not be satisfied.”