As Boston parents’ frustration over late buses and stranded kids boils over, BPS leadership and Mayor Michelle Wu spoke out Tuesday to assure families transportation updates are coming and adjustments are being made.
“We understand it is a learning curve, and for parents, that can mean frustration, and has meant frustration in the first couple of weeks of school,” said BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper outside of Ruth Batson Academy early Tuesday. “We will be doing a major update on Tuesday evening into Wednesday.”
The city’s bus transportation has been plagued with issues through the start of the 2024-25 school year, with less than a third of buses arriving on time to school on the first day. District leaders have cited causes in the major rollout of new GPS technology on buses — allowing parents to track student’s buses and receive notifications on the Zum app — and a major influx of new students ahead of school.
Bus on-time performance has improved “steadily” over the last eight days, Wu said. This week, the percent of buses reaching school within 15 minutes late crossed 90% and arrivals within 30 minutes has reached 98%, Skipper stated.
Starting Tuesday night and continuing weekly, the superintendent said the district will start “major updates” of routes to adjust for new students and data collected on route issues. The GPS technology takes time to adapt to the city’s roads and traffic patterns, she added, and will become “smarter and smarter” as use continues.
Skipper said she’s anticipating the Tuesday adjustments will “take care of some of the more problematic routes and make the routes more efficient.”
The officials emphasized they expect the new technology to begin to significantly improve the bus reliability, efficiency, safety and transparency over time.
“Our system that we were using was 30 years old, and it was relying on clipboards and printouts for students, which allows for lots of human error,” said Skipper. “And we also saw buses that weren’t efficient in getting back and forth. So for many, many reasons, we had to make the change, to take a step backward, to take two steps forward.”
Asked when the district may expect to reach the prior year’s end point of 90% on-time performance or the state-mandated goal of 95%, BPS transportation director Dan Rosengard said he’s “hesitant” to give a timeline, but the team is working “urgently.”
Rosengard did say he expects 99% or more of buses will consistently land within 30 minutes late “very soon,” avoiding the more “extreme delays.”
“It’s very typical, September, October, November, to see lower (on-time performance)s, and then acceleration in December, January, the winter months, and then in the spring hit stride,” said Skipper. “So we wouldn’t expect to get to a 90% within the first couple of months, simply because we’ve never done that.”
BPS and the city are examining how other large school districts measure on-time bus performance and what on-time performance has been reached in the district’s passed, Wu said, reflecting on the benchmark goal of 95% the city agreed to in Systemic Improvement Plan deal with the state years ago.
“The 95% was stated as a goal to make sure that BPS would be accountable and collaborative and working towards that,” Wu said. “And again, our real goal was 100%, but it was a little bit pulled out of wanting to set a benchmark, rather than based on anything that was truly measured or deemed reachable by any school district.”
Skipper said the district has reached out to “each of the parents impacted” by the transportation issues to apologize and empathize.
“We understand that challenge,” said Skipper. “And we are working really hard because of that with urgency to make sure that those get corrected.”
