'Very fed up': Boston parents fume over chronically late school buses

For Roslindale resident Laura Gonzales McKenna, each day at the school bus stop is a guessing game: When are her kids coming home?

“It’s almost like a long running joke now,” she said of the too-often late bus. “What are we in store for today?”

But parents with kids in the Boston Public School system aren’t really laughing. Nor are they happy with what they say is poor communication about delays from school and bus company officials. And penalties for late buses baked into the transportation company's contract are not being enforced by school officials.

The growing frustration from parents over the inconsistent buses has drawn the attention of elected officials. The Boston City Council plans to hold an emergency hearing Tuesday to “examine chronic school bus delays” and the “impact on students and families.”

The bus that takes McKenna’s three kids to school more than three miles away in Roxbury is often late. On some days, it doesn't show up at all, leaving families scrambling to get their kids to and from school.

“This year has been, without a doubt, the worst year of bus service,” she said.

“ That is almost exactly one month of school where we did not have a school bus.”

Parent Laura Gonzales McKenna

The assigned bus for McKenna’s kids was either significantly late, missing or not tracked 21 times this school year, according to an email she received from the district’s transportation director in late February.

“ That is almost exactly one month of school where we did not have a school bus,” she said. “People are very fed up with it at this point.”

McKenna, whose family moved to Boston three years ago, said persistent delays affect all of her kids, ages 5, 8 and 10. They attend the Rafael Hernández, a dual-language English-Spanish immersion school, where her third grader is on an Individualized Education Program.

“For him, missing instruction is really difficult because it's harder for him to transition in when everything's already moving forward,” she said.

According to data provided to WBUR from the start of the school year through January, the district’s bus operator — Transdev — is falling short of benchmarks for on-time service.

The bus company's contract with Boston requires at least 95% on-time performance. Yet, Transdev only averaged 90% on-time performance in the morning and 84% in afternoon.

For example, on March 20, a morning bus for McKenna’s kids didn’t arrive at school until 9:18 am — more than 45 minutes after classes had started.

Transportation issues for the district are not new. Chronic bus delays have exasperated Boston parents for years, across multiple school administrations.

In 2022, the district nearly went into state receivership, in part because of poor bus performance. As part of the agreement with the state to retain local control of its schools, city leaders pledged to meet a 95% on-time standard for its bus routes.

Boston has yet to consistently achieve that requirement.

Boston’s school choice system — which allows children to attend schools outside their neighborhood — and notorious congestion are perennial challenges. The district must also provide busing for students in dozens of charter, parochial and private schools, further complicating route planning.

Transdev, a private operator for multiple transportation systems in the U.S., has managed bus operations for the school district since 2013. The company is responsible for hiring and training bus drivers and operating and maintaining a bus fleet of more than 700 buses that transport roughly 22,000 students to more than 200 schools on a given day.

"Boston families count on dependable school transportation, and we understand how disruptive and frustrating it is when buses are delayed or do not arrive as planned," the company said in a statement. "We take this responsibility to heart and are committed to addressing these concerns."

Boston Public Schools spokesman Chris McKinnon said in a statement “staffing vacancies, absenteeism, mechanical issues, and inclement weather have caused some coverage challenges in recent months.”

Enrique Pepén, city councilor for Roslindale, Mattapan and Hyde Park, said delayed buses are among the top concerns he’s heard since stepping into office two years ago.

“ I think the biggest concern as a parent is just having that fear of, where is my child?” he said.  “Or in the morning you're thinking, 'how long is my child going to wait outside for the bus?' ”

Erin Ramsey-Tooher, a Roslindale parent whose three children also attend the Hernández, said she’s  ”flabbergasted” by taxpayer dollars being wasted when a bus shows up two hours late for afternoon pickup, long after students have found another way home.

“So then you have a completely empty bus driving the streets of the city of Boston with no kids on it,” she said.

The district’s $189 million transportation budget has grown each year despite shrinking enrollment. Next fiscal year, the transportation budget will top $200 million under the latest budget passed by the school committee.

BPS Transportation Director Dan Rosengard recently assured committee members in a memo the district’s five-year contract with Transdev, which took effect in July 2023, also includes “extensive oversight and accountability mechanisms” to ensure safe and reliable bus transportation. 

But those mechanisms aren’t being enforced.

The district can issue a $500 penalty against Transdev if it misses a daily trip or is more than one hour late to a stop, unless "directly attributable to a routing issue or weather emergency."

There were 3,469 such instances from August through March 13, data from the district shows. That's 1% of total trips this school year, McKinnon said.

But the district hasn’t issued any penalties against Transdev, he added, as “past experience has shown this is not the most effective lever for improving performance.”

Parent Ramsey-Tooher cites another stubborn problem: getting accurate updates.

She’s received faulty notifications from Zūm, the district’s bus tracking phone app that was rolled out two years ago to provide parents with up-to-the-minute news on their children's location — or an arriving bus' whereabouts.

“Either there’s no bus at all, there’s no driver, we’re not notified … (or) the wait times are obscenely long,” she said. “I don’t feel the public is being given a clear explanation for why this is happening.”

McKinnon stated the district understands parents’ frustrations.

“We remain focused on more long-term and large-scale improvements, such as route efficiency and improving the use of Zum, to ensure safe and excellent transportation services are provided to every student who rides the bus,” he said.

Transdev's statement to WBUR said "our priority is to turn recent progress into long-term, sustainable performance.”

But parents haven’t noticed major improvements.

Ramsey-Tooher became so desperate she started a WhatsApp group for parents to find their children last-minute rides or arrange carpools.

“We can go pick up kids, we have vehicles, but that's certainly not the case for everyone,” she said.

Some parents don’t have transportation and others work early or late jobs.

“I imagine that across the district there are other families whose kids will just have to stay home on a given day if a bus doesn't come,” Ramsey-Tooher said.