Busing Woes

This was sent out by a bus provider supposedly  due to insurance issues.

Dear Parents,

We apologize for the late text, but we were just notified by LSTA that your daughter’s bus will not be running their routes tomorrow morning. LSTA apologizes on behalf of Seman Tov’s total cancellation of its routes and is working hard to rectify the situation. We will keep you updated on the PM routes.

Submitted.

"So the bussing situation is now officially pathetic with Seman Tov off the roads... Kids are getting home close to 2 hours after dismissal this isn't acceptable. Waiting at school for close to an hour and then on the bus for another hour and sometimes longer. Some routes just dome make sense having the bus pick up a route and then expected to be at the next school 25 minutes later, so what's happening is its getting to the school 45 minutes or more later and that's 20-30 minutes after the 2nd schools dismissal. It's not acceptable for LSTA to claim routes are filled if this is how it's being done. Someone better figure this out ASAP. I guess the schools are under pressure to accept the routes because they're the ones suffering with the early/late arrival and late departures of the students. I picked up my child from school at dismissal 1 day and there was not a bus in sight. The busses should be lined up in front of a school at dismissal time".

Local officials remain silent

It’s the start of a new school year, and once again the busing headaches are back.

Back when the BOE handled transportation for private schools, askanim never hesitated to speak out. If a bus came late, if routes were too long, or if pickups were missed, there were press conferences, media coverage, and plenty of public pressure.

But ever since the LSTA took over responsibility for transporting yeshiva students, it’s been a different story. Suddenly, there’s silence. Local politicians and school officials have nothing to say, while LSTA officials keep repeating their favorite line: “We’re busing 50,000 kids a day, not everything will be perfect.”

That may sound nice, but parents know the truth it’s far from perfect. Drivers are stretched thin, covering multiple routes in the mornings. Some kids are dragged out of the house before dawn, while others arrive to school a half hour late. In the afternoons, children are sitting on buses for over an hour and a half just to get home.

The sad part is that solutions exist. For instance, neighborhoods could be picked up and dropped off together, instead of every school running its own set of routes. But schools have resisted that idea, and so the problems drag on, year after year, with no accountability and no real change.