Looks like I missed it today.
"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.
Related: I Missed the Boston Globe School Bus
Ooops. Oh, well.
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....
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Sorry, readers, but I am running late.
