Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and School Superintendent Mary Skipper held a press conference Tuesday morning to discuss busing issues that have been impacting district families over the first week of the new school year.
Last week, two Boston city councilors asked the state to intervene due to chronic issues with late school buses.
City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy wrote a letter to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education asking them to look into Boston Public Schools transportation and help develop a plan.
The issues have been especially pronounced this school year, with two-thirds of the morning buses arriving late on the first day of school despite the use of a new GPS tracking app that was supposed to help parents and improve upon arrival times.
"We know that parents have been frustrated," Skipper said. "We continue to work on the issue hard. We're throwing everything at it."
She said there are over 22,000 students who take the bus in Boston, with over 650 vehicles. By the end of last year, buses were arriving on time over 90% of the time. But the district knew they couldn't improve upon that number without upgrading the technology. In addition, they wanted parents to be able to see where the buses were.
That led them to implement a bus tracking app for families, and Skipper said that has led to some delays as the drivers get used to the new technology.
The rollout of the Zum Transportation App gives users real time data about drivers, routes and pickup and drop off times -- but it hasn't come without some bumps in the road, and some parents and bus drivers say it's been a source of headaches.
Still, the district is pushing through and believes the hiccups will be resolved.
"What we've seen is, over the course of now the ninth day, we've seen our OTP [On Time Percentage] coming up each day in a positive way," she said. "Our within 15 minutes has been within the 90th percentile, which we use as a good indicator."
"Clearly, for us it's not where we want it to be yet, but we are moving in the right direction," Skipper added.
But both she and Wu said they understand why parents are frustrated.
"We have been deep in many, many meetings with the team to see how we can take things to the next level with this app, and also make sure we're doing our best to communicate that to families," Wu explained. "The numbers are very clear that there needs to be improvements. They've also been steadily improving."
Skipper said there will be a major update to the app Tuesday night into Wednesday, routing new students who have been added to the system since Aug. 9 and updating it with address and school changes. The hope is that update will improve upon some of the issues families have experienced so far.
Wu says the adjustment is necessary in order to provide greater accountability and transparency when it comes to picking up students and getting them to class.
The mayor also said that she and the superintendent, along with other transportation officials, will be riding some of the more problematic routes Wednesday morning to test the new update on the Zum app -- updates they say will happen on a weekly basis.
Skipper says they're confident that they will be able to close the gap on the on-time performance rate in the coming weeks as drivers get better acquainted with changing bus routes and late enrollment settles.
