Hub school bus drivers gave warning of route troubles

January 30, 2012|Akilah Johnson, Globe Staff

Three weeks before classes began this school year, bus drivers warned their bosses that Boston’s schools were destined to repeat “massive, systemwide chaos’’ if they proceeded with error-ridden routes that would not allow enough time to transport students.

The routes were used anyway. And now, the school system finds itself wrestling with persistent bus tardiness, as 1 out of ever 10 students still arrives after the first bell rings. City and school officials have struggled to get students to class on time since the school year started, when up to 37 percent of buses arrived as much as an hour late.

“It wasn’t like we had mystical powers to forecast the future,’’ said Stevan Kirschbaum, spokesman for the Boston School Bus Drivers Union. “You had routes that had zero minutes in between stops, and routes that were way overcrowded.’’

The August warning from bus drivers came in the form of a grievance, filed by the drivers’ union, against First Student Inc., the private provider of school bus services. The drivers demanded that the company “correct all route problems … immediately’’ and add 15 minutes to each route “as a cushion against massive lateness until total correction is made.’’

The routes had too many stops, did not allow enough time between stops, and provided too little time to complete bus yard duties, according to the Aug. 24 grievance obtained by the Globe. “The routes … were systematically flawed, containing massive errors in both flat rates and safe on-time routing - insufficient times to safely and timely complete the work,’’ the grievance stated.

First Student spokesman Timothy Stokes said the company briefed the School Department about the union’s complaint, “as is required by our contract to inform them of all grievances.’’ He declined to comment further, “as this is a legal issue.’’

The union had filed a similar warning at the start of the 2010-11 academic year, when the School Department first introduced a computerized routing and fleet management system. At the beginning of last year, much as this year, buses arrived chronically late and drivers said the computerized system was at the heart of the tardiness problem.

School system spokesman Matthew Wilder noted that the complaint was filed before drivers test-drove the routes and that after doing dry runs, only five problems were reported.

“The numbers speak for themselves,’’ Wilder said. “Anyone who says this served as a warning of problems to come would be short-sighted. Anytime a driver alerts First Student or us to the fact that their route isn’t possible, we’re willing to tweak that and we certainly did. We haven’t shied away from responsibility, but there were other complicating factors.’’